Sampark Foundation

 

https://www.financialexpress.com/education-2/frugal-tech-innovations-in-education/1763960/

This was not a story of just one classroom I saw in the winter of 2012 but the story of 14 crore children in India’s 740,000-plus government schools where learning levels showed alarming negative trends despite increased investments. As I drove back to Delhi that dark evening it was clear to me what I needed to do – talk less about the problem and try and do my best to find a solution. I quit my cushy job as CEO of a multi-billion dollar company and started working full time with these schools through Sampark Foundation. What we needed was design thinking and an out-of-the-box innovative approach that was frugal and scalable so as to impact many and not just a few.

The first step in design thinking was to answer the basic question of what exactly is the problem? Many did point to the poor infrastructure – the crumbling buildings, the broken benches, absence of toilets et al. Yes, all of this was a problem, but the real problem was how the teachers teach. Teachers are mostly uninspired, uninterested and untrained; pedagogy is flawed and outdated —thus the classroom transaction is a boring, dull and an unedifying affair.

We decided to change that by designing unique innovations in teaching tools and methods that could ignite a rural classroom. After years of research, we developed Sampark Smart Shala, a cutting-edge, technology-driven frugal solution, based on user-centric design thinking, and our entire intervention costs less than $1 per child per annum. Sampark Smart Shala uses audio technology along with a voice mascot called ‘Sampark Didi’ combined with music, stories, songs and interactive TLMs to make teaching and learning fun. Since schools in rural India don’t have uninterrupted access to electricity or the internet, a battery-operated audio box is a better choice. Such devices can be made available easily, they are affordable, need low skills to use and, ignite a child’s imagination.