Summer vacations are time for doing nothing and then having all day to do something. Sik-shana has designed its summer camp keeping the same in mind. Students of grade 4th to 8th from 67 Govt. schools across Rural & Urban Bangalore are having fun in the summer camps, while also revising the concepts learnt in the previous academic year and enhancing their 21st century skills, such as critical thinking, creativity, communication and collaboration. Sikshana Mentors are ensuring that the students enjoy their summer vacations without forgetting everything they learned through-out the year.

These camps are scheduled for a month with a motive to engage and encourage the students to learn various skills through

games and activities. Through these activities some children are working on improving their English reading & writing skills as well as learning eco-friendly liv-ing methodologies through pa-per bag making & sapling planta-tion along with stimulating their critical thinking abilities with activities like yoga, meditation, art and craft and indoor games.

In the meantime, some students are also leveraging the summer camps to learn computer basics and enhance their ICT skills while others are pursuing some per-forming arts like Kamsale (folk dance from Karnataka) and thea-tre to enhance their skills in these areas.

Few glimpses of the Summer Camp Activities can be viewed in the collage above.

B e a t t h e H e a t T h i s S u m m e r

Read Every Day (R.E.D) is a pro-gram being piloted by Sikshana in the Summer Camps for a mixed age group of students with the goal to help them hone their reading skills in English. Students are encouraged to Read Every Day for an hour in the Summer Camps. The focus of this initiative is to equip the stu-dents to become comfortable and confident in English pronun-ciation and comprehension through a customized workbook. The workbook has questions that range from foundational to high-

er level to help students in differ-ent competency levels to acquire reading competencies in alpha-bets, words and simple sentenc-es.

R e a d E v e r y D a y ( R . E . D )

SIKSHANA SANDESHA

Vol. 10 | Ed. May 2019

I n T h e N e w s Sikshana’s Read Every Day (R.E.D) program has received a great feedback and acceptance from parents and education

department staff alike.

The details on Summer Camps have been featured in the local Kannada newspa-pers.

Panchayat Development Officer Mr. Kumar has ex-pressed that the camp has helped students learn foun-dational English which is the basic pre-requisite for their grade level learning along with the other skill building activities. Please read all the articles here.

Mrs. Chitra (standing, front) & Mrs. Shaifali (also standing) training

Sikshana’s mentors to implement R.E.D program in Summer Camps

Sikshana’s Sports Camp:

Sikshana’s Girl Empowerment Program (SGEP) is designed to enable, empower & encourage adolescent girls in every field of their interest. Under this program we have 25 girls from the rural parts of Ramanagara & Kanakapura who have a keen interest in Volley Ball and are aspiring to be national level players and represent India someday. Sikshana in Partnership with Dell Volun-teers have taken up the re-sponsibility to ensure that these girls get everything they need to chase their dream. With that goal, Sikshana has

re-started the volley ball coaching for these girls post exams.

As the girls are relatively free because of the schools being closed, they are being coached in an extremely structured & rigorous man-ner in a Sports Camp orga-nized by Sikshana with sup-port from Dell Volunteers. The same coaching activity which is now being held eve-ry day during the Summer Camp, will continue to be conducted on weekends for the rest of the academic year.

Students are thoroughly en-joying their training during the camp hours and are putting in a lot of efforts. Team Sikshana & Dell Volun-teers are looking forwards to their performance in the Sik-shana-Dell Annual Sports meet 2020. You can see a glimpse of the same enthusi-asm in the adjoining picture.

This initiative is designed and led by Mrs. Chitra Rao - Ex-Principal of National Public School and Mrs. Shaifali - Clini-cal Psychologist by profession and an educator. R.E.D will be introduced as a year-long activi-ty in select schools from the upcoming academic year.

S e c t i o n — S i k s h a n a S a a d h a k a

In this edition of Sikshana Saadhaka, we would like to recognize and congratulate

Mr. Vinod H M who joined Sikshana in the year 2010 as a Para Teacher. Mr. Vinod today is Block Mentor for all Sikshana’s Technology in Education Program (STEP)locations. He is known for his thorough knowledge of the programs offered by the organization and his amazing people management skills.

His expertise lies in handling Red Category Schools and

successfully converting them to more cooperative locations for conducting Sikshana initiatives. He has shown tremendous transfor-mation in his own technical and communication skills

S i k s h a n a P a r t n e r ’ s M e e t Sikshana’s Annual Partners Meet for all CSR & other Partners was organized on April 6th 2019 . The event was attended by repre-sentatives from Sikshana’s CSR Partners and management team. The main agenda of the meet was to show case the impact of Sikshana’s various initiatives to all CSR Partners along with high-lighting the journey of Sikshana. The way forward for the year 2020 was also discussed in the gathering.

The event was opened by a wel-come speech from Mr. Prashanth Prakash— Chairman of Sikshana’s board followed by a presentation on Sikshana’s initiatives by Mr. Sunil N—V.P Operations for Sikshana’s Pan India Operations. A presentation on Project Based Learning (PBL) & Customized Learning Achieve-ment Path (CLAP) was given by Mr. Prasanna Vadayar—CEO, Sikshana to ensure that the part-ners understand Sikshana’s initi-atives completely.

Dr. P C Jaffer (Chief Public In-struction Officer of Department of Education) was invited as a Key note Speaker and he threw light on the Govt-NGO partner-ships and why it is important for CSR partners to support projects with a sustainable approach. He also thanked Sikshana for being the tech backbone of the Depart-

Clockwise from top—Mr. Prasanna Vadayar (CEO—Sikshana), Mr. Sunil N (VP Ops—Sikshana), Dr. P C Jaffer (Dept of Educa-tion), Mrs. Archana (Dell), Panel discussion moderated by Mr.

Ravindra Krishnappa (Sikshana) with representatives from Bril-lio—Mr. Abhishek Ranjan (right), Ms. Alpa Chandan (Target; Center) and Mr. Rajesh Krishnan (TE Connectivity; left), Mr.

Manish (United Way), Mr. Ebenezer Vidyasagar (Vibha), Ms. Rohini Kamath (CISCO), Mr. Prashanth (Board Member—

Sikshana)

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ment of Education and setting up a solid M&E process for the Govt. Machinery.

Mrs. Archana Jain from Dell shared her experience of working with Sikshana for more than a decade for tech program and also spoke on the journey of Sik-shana’s Girl Empowerment Pro-gram (SGEP) over the last 7

years—an initiative that start-ed with just 15 girls and is now supporting 385 girls across Karnataka.

Mr. Manish—CEO of United Way India made an inspiring statement at the event and emphasized on the fact that donors should invest in the vision and mission of any Non-

Profit Organization and not just focus on the projects undertak-en by them as this approach will enable the organizations to work towards their goal with a renewed sense of enthusiasm without worries on the out-comes and targets.

Ms. Rohini Kamath from CISCO spoke about the importance of 21st century skills & remedial support for students who are struggling and why the partner-ship with Sikshana is more than just CSR and is all about solving a complex problem.

Mr. Ebenezer Vidyasagar from Sikshana’s long term partner Vibha shed light on investing in a project and importance of supporting the scaling of right projects.

Representatives from other partners like TE Connectivity, Target, Allstate and Brillio were also present in the event and a few of them did participate in the Panel-Discussion on Sustain-ability and exit strategy of vari-ous projects which was moder-ated by Sikshana’s Board Mem-ber Mr. Ravindra Krishnappa.

Team Sikshana is forever grate-ful to its partners for the trust & support we receive from them and are looking forward to cre-ating a bigger impact in 2019-20 academic session.

which aid in his convincing skills at schools.

The STEP mentor has de-signed and implemented a simple yet effective method of tracking weak students and tagging them with peers to help them to improve in their academics.

Sikshana heartily commends the inner drive in Vinod and wishes him good luck for his future. Keep up the good work!