Mumbai: Ugam, a Merkle company, a next-generation data and analytics company has collaborated with 321 Education Foundation to run a volunteer initiative called ‘Curate to Educate’ to overcome disruptions to the education of children due to the pandemic. As part of this event, several Ugamites volunteered to curate quality learning material in foundational subjects like Math, English, and Environmental Studies for children from grades one to five with an aim to bridge the learning gap arising from the pandemic for underprivileged children.
Ugam has a long-standing partnership with 321 Education Foundation, which is a non-governmental organization with a mission to maximize the potential of each child by maximizing the potential of each educator and each school. The objective of the foundation’s work is to achieve rigorous student learning across the foundational areas of numeracy and literacy, high teacher performance, and meaningful parent engagement. The foundation runs its programs in budget private schools, government schools, and with NGO partners in Mumbai, Hyderabad, and Bangalore with an objective to facilitate quality education for underprivileged children.
India has come a long way in providing schooling for children through government programs such as Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA), aimed at universalizing primary education. However, the quality of education is yet to be achieved. Moreover, COVID-19 has further disrupted the learning experience, especially impacting educators and students from budget private schools and government schools that function with limited funds and resources. The situation has put a financial strain on teachers, students, and their parents/caregivers. In addition to this, most low-income families own a single mobile device that runs on limited internet data. This adds to the challenges to curate optimized material to enable teaching and learning for teachers and students, respectively.
321 Education Foundation created a user-friendly and financially viable program called CAPE to bridge this learning gap and ensure continuous learning. However, the curation of high-quality assignments in a short time was the need of the hour. Through the ‘Curate to Educate’ event, a total of 65 assignments were curated by Ugamites in phase 1, resulting in over 100 manhours of work time saved for educators. The material curated is estimated to benefit over 3 lakh underprivileged children across the country.
Sunil Mirani, Co-founder and CEO, Ugam said, “School from home is difficult, especially for the underprivileged. The pandemic has pushed over 8 crore children and teachers into an online learning world that they were not prepared for. While we cannot choose our circumstances, we can certainly choose our response. I am proud of the response demonstrated by Ugamites who voluntarily invest time and effort to drive a genuine impact in the field of education. We are driven by the cause of nurturing a thriving ecosystem for educators, students, and their caregivers, and ensuring that learning does not stop despite the challenges arising from the pandemic.”