Hyderabad: NGO conducts online classes for poor students

Hyderabad: Even though many sectors have started limping back to normalcy after the authorities announced relaxation in lockdown norms, but the education machinery including schools, colleges and institutions remains to be totally shut. With an objective that students do not suffer, many institutions started imparting education by conducting online classes. But the government school students where a majority of students are from poor families have been deprived of the online classes.

In such a situation, Hyderabad-based NGO, Yashoda Foundation has taken the initiative to help the government school children and orphanage children. The NGO launched a programme Disha , a digital community learning center, so that they could be updated with their subjects.

Navin Kumar Barpathi, CEO of Yashoda Foundation, Tarnaka, said, "The ongoing pandemic has slowed down or stopped the process of learning and education for many children, especially the ones in marginalised sections, impoverished communities, and many government school children. "We want students from these underprivileged communities to continue learning. So the NGO started a programme called Disha, a Digital Community Learning Center in July through which we are providing quality e-learning technologies for the needy students .

Yashoda Foundation is a Corporate Social Responsibility wing of Pro Arch IT solutions Pvt Ltd, Uppal. Being a partner with Microsoft, it has facilitated 5000 licenses to provide digital education for the underprivileged students through Microsoft Teams a cloud-based mobile app to drive the concept of e-learning enabling education accessible to the most marginalized children. This initiative is the brainchild of Santosh Kumar Kaveti, CEO, ProArch and Founder of Yashoda Foundation.

"Right now we are conducting online classes for class 10th students of government schools. Around 64 students from five different government schools and nine different orphanages including Inspires home, Rainbow home and others, are being catered with online services. Daily the classes are being conducted from 9 am to 11.30 am. Soon classes will also start for 9th and 8th class students. In this initiative, there are around 5 volunteers who are selflessly teaching the students online," he said.

"Earlier, through community learning centers, we used to run tuition centers in different slums attached to government schools. I'm thankful that I got an opportunity to teach these children. For the past 6 years I am teaching in the Yashoda foundation community class at Attaguda. Classroom teaching is quite different from online teaching. With the help of worksheets, activity sheets as well as video lessons I'm trying to teach them so that students can work them out and clear any doubts they might have," said Sukanya, teacher and volunteer of Yashoda Foundation.

"Due lockdown I was wondering how will I complete my lessons. While private schools started online classes but for government school children there are no such classes. Thanks to Yashoda Foundation to provide online classes. I eagerly await for the online classes every morning," said Sona, a student of Class 10, Attaguda Government school

"Being in 10th class my main worry was how would I complete my syllabus. At Attaguda Government school neither we were given any books nor online classes were being conducted. But after Yashoda Foundation has started online classes for us my worries have vanished," said Durga, Rainbow homes.