Children Know Best

Rajasthan shuts for Holi, the Hindu celebration of colors, so I headed to Beawar to spend time with Yash and the Mangal family, our partners for our first school, Mangal Newton. During Holi, most of the children who stay at the hostel go home; however, two of the scholarship students at Mangal Newton, Rishab (from Chandighar) and Nikhil (from Jammu) are too far from home so they were welcomes into the Mangal family’s home for these auspicious days. In the midst of throwing colors and eating traditional dhal bhati, I asked each of them to give me 3 ideas for how we can improve Mangal Newton. I described our vision to bring the best to this school for them and Rishab quickly responded, with “Yash sir is not only trying to make this the best school in India but the best school in the world!”

Within 20 minutes, Rishab also had his frist idea: English coaching classes so that everyone can be a good public speaker and be an MC of one of Mangal Newton’s many public shows. 15 minutes later, “Maam, I have another idea…..”. In Hindi, he described how his science teacher is teaching a topic, like how iron turns to a magnet, it is hard to understand so we should give teacher iron so she can show the kids how it works. I am thinking – this is it! This is not an educator, not an academic, not a school management company speaking, this Rishab, in 6th grade saying that he wants and needs to see and do things. We must respond to this need and there are may organizations like Agastaya Foundation who are thinking specifically about how to create interactive science curriculum. Education Access for All looks forward to working with such organizations to bring such innovation into schools and also working with them to digitize such curriculum so it can spread across India at scale.

Schools at Scale

Editor’s note: Yash Mangal is the Director of Mangal Newton School and will be leading Newton Management Company as we expand to new geographies and areas. He will also be regularly contributing to this blog.

Last week, I joined Deepti and Erica for a few days to visit schools in small towns across Rajasthan. As a Director of a school myself, it was an eye-opening and humbling experience. We started Mangal Newton because when we were kids, there were not any good options for schools in Beawar. To be honest, I thought we were pioneers in bringing such innovative learning to such a small town; however, it was interesting to see so many families with a similar vision as our own doing the same for their towns. In fact, we saw the only university level chemistry lab to be installed in a school in Rajasthan in a small town called Jhunjunu.

At the same time, it was often concerning to see families and individuals invest unlimited time and money into just ONE school which will likely be able to serve about 2000 children a year at the most. The investment they are making could easily be shared with other schools in the area such that the innovation can reach children at scale. Newton Management Company aspires to leverage the fact that many families in these small towns are motivated by having a school in their name; but at the same time, aspires to achieve scale by partnering with a number of schools in a community. We look forward to learning from the other education innovators in small towns and partnering with them to achieve our vision.

By Yash Mangal

Unsticking schools

Darpan Sharma doesn’t share the appearance of polish and sophistication of many of the principals we met in Pilani; nor does he have fancy advanced degrees which principals are eager to share. But he has a vision and love for his students; he wants to get beyond India’s rote system and bring more innovation to his students but he is stuck, so stuck that he even tried bribing a government teacher for the government e-learning product. He was denied so instead, he bought one off CDs in the market, which he admits are of poor quality, and has his senior science students stay after school to gather around his one computer to watch the animation.

This is what we are trying to unstick; schools with limited funds and more so, limited exposure are unaware and unable to leverage much of the innovation that is happening in education; no one is approaching them, and much of what is available is of poor quality or too expensive.

He is doing what he can and has even created 3D materials for maths and science, making cones out of construction paper and copying rupee note on his own to stretch his children’s imagination.

We are eager to learn from Mr. Sharma as we work with him to achieve his vision!

One Village at a Time

Visit Pilani, Rajasthan and you feel the potential of India. 70 years ago, Pilani was a remote village in the desert of Rajasthan. Today it is thriving town – often reminding me of Stanford’s campus – serving as an education center for Rajasthan.

Thank you, GD Birla. His commitment and vision for Pilani is something both other wealthy families with roots in small villages and organizations should be looking to emulate. He invested in building a world class scientific institution in his hometown, BITS Pilani, and has supported this villages transformation. Streets are wide, lined by flowers and fields and full of students, scientists, and doctors on their bikes. Gandhi’s statue is prominent and while the town carries a sense of scientific advancement, at the same time, in holds Indian values and tradition at its heart.

After observing a Bharatnatyam class (pictures to come) at Birla Balika Vidyapeeth, an all girls schools in Pilani, I asked if any of them wanted to come to New York. Unlike in most other classrooms where I ask the same question, only one hand when shooting up. Another girl explained, “We all want to come to New York to see the city but not to work or live because we want to improve our country first.” I only wish I heard that in more of the classrooms we visited and hope that as we work with schools and communities, this sense of service and giving back can be one of the things we emphasize.

It was equally exciting to see a positive response to our eTutor product in such booming educational center and I am hopeful we can build some partnerships that we will learn significantly from.

And now off to Hanumaghar and Ganganagar, a small towns on the Pakistan border where I am sure our learning will continue….

I want to be Ayushi!!

Blogging has been a harder task than expected and my excuses are endless but now that we have started our “Rajasthan Roadshow” – a two week trip in an attempt to understand the challenges facing schools in small towns (population 250K – 500K) and define the market for e-Tutor — it feels as though we must share what we are understanding and experiencing across schools in Rajasthan.

“I don’t care about becoming Mukesh Ambani, I want to be Ayusha”, clamored a young ten year girl, named Ayushi at Bhartiya Public School. She had a determination in her pose and in her eyes as she addressed our team and her own principal and director. She explained her frustration: “I don’t have the freedom to create my own path” and advised us that in addition to working with schools, we should be focused on parents.

Another student, Puja, in the 12^th standard, wanted to become a dancer but only after receiving her IIT degree and recommended that the school create a career counseling program. She explained, “In Delhi, my cousins know what options are available – they know they can be journalists, artists, or DJs but in Sikar we don’t know whats out there…we just keep hearing about being doctors or engineers…”

Our team was impressed to see such fearlessness in the students at Bhartiya Public School in Sikar, a small town on the eastern edge of Rajasthan with a population of about 200,000. Education Access of All’s goal is to work with such schools and communities to bring the innovation in education that exists in urban areas across India and globally to support their students. As some of you already know, currently we have two initiatives: Newton Management Company, which works with local schools to bring best practices such as career counseling to their schools and e-Tutor, an interactive software based on CBSE curriculum that bring individualized and interactive learning to students. We are continuing to refine our strategy as we meet with schools as well as leaders in the education space. We are early in our growth and look forward to developing the best options to help fulfill the aspiration and the schools in towns like Sikar.

Blogging?!?!?

I never thought I would start a blog but Abe, a very good friend of mine, also moving to Bombay for a few months decided to make it a competition and for those of you who know me well, you know that was enough to get me started!!

I do hope this blog allows me to stay connected to family and friends and that I can keep each of you connected to the journey ahead of me and hear your thoughts on many of the questions that I know will arise.

From as early as I can remember, my mom has been saying “an education is the only thing no one can take away from you” and thus invested heavily in the education of her three children. I have always been grateful for this gift and experience as sense of freedom and security as as result. Today, I feel privileged to create such options for families in India who have the same dreams for their children as my mother. In that spirit, I have named this blog Ajaadi, Hindi for Freedom, and shared a quote from Maria Montessori, a woman’s whose commitment to an innovative approach to education has not only touched me personally as a student of her schools but contributed to a social movement to redefine education to get beyond facts and tests to include the development of a whole child.

As many of you already know, I am partnering with one of Acumen Fund’s (where I have been working for the last 2.5 years) current investees, Shaffi Mather who started 1298, India’s first private ambulance company. We believe that private enterprise has a significant role to play in the reform of India’s education system and are building schools as well as an e-learning platform to reach rural communities who otherwise would not have options to high quality affordable education. Shaffi has a bold goal of reaching every state in India (there are 28 of them!) by 2015 and I am looking forward to joining him and a team in India to make this dream possible.

Please continue to visit this blog as I track our success, failures and the lessons we are learning along the way. There is a tremendous amount we have to learn from all of you and I hope this provides an opportunity for us to stay connected!

Happy holidays and best wishes for a peaceful new year,
Deepti