Mrs. Tina Vajpeyai speaks about Akansha’s projects with its impacts

In 1989 Akansha began by Ms Shaheen Mistri. It was a very simple and basic idea which was to give less privileged a place where they could come and enjoy their childhood.Very quickly Akansha realized what these children actually need is a place where they could learn and gain the skills so that they could build a better future for themselves.And form this idea the Akansha center was born.

So our main projects to run the Akansha learning center, which we currently have 63 centers across Mumbai and Pune. Each center caters up to 60 children. We teach the English and we focus on them having a solid foundation on English and math. But at the same time we ensure they have fun and do it through creative activities. And the main aim is that they leave Akansha with employment opportunities and capability to make correct choices and decisions.

Akansha is also running municipal schools in Mumbai and Pune, two in Mumbai and two in Pune. The one in Pune, we are running in partnership with Thermax Social Initiatives. There we are following the HSC curriculum. But Akansha has placed its own teachers and they have their own freedom. They teach with their own methodology and creative techniques. This makes the schools so much fun-filled and proves to be a learning ground for the children. We also encourage the teacher to build a caring environment for them as well as encourage parent’s interaction.
We do not follow standards exactly what we follow is 10 level programme. We recruit children at the age of five and they can remain with us till they are 18.
We usually have a cluster of centers, 4 or 5 centers in the same vicinity. So as the move up they can also go to other centers to find out where their learning level has reached. We have made our own curriculum to teach English, math, the empowerment for all the children, sex education. We also have extra curriculum subject such as art program, to teach computers, we give access to computer education. We have couple of other programmes; one is highly intensive programme for higher IQ children who have a possibility to be integrated into private schools. So there are about 60 children we have taken out of municipal school system and put them into private schools. So we have couple of different programmes like that.

In fact in 2007 we had a few couple of economist from the University of Cambridge and Oxford University. They came to do a study. They did a very extensive evaluation and they looked at the impact of the alumni. Now that we have crossed 18 years, we have a large pool of children who have finished the whole program and are now in college or working. So we were able to track them through. In fact experts from that report states that they found the Akansha alumni quite different from their peers along a number of different dimensions. These include occupational success, self-esteem, aspirations. This in itself is striking where one compels their effects to their classmates who are materially better of.

So what we find is our kids in Akansha who finish their half year program and go on into college. Although they are from a lower-income background compared to the peer in college they actually seem to be doing better in a sense that they are more sure of themselves, their language ability is stronger. And these things have not been an impact of their home environment or their school environment but more likely the Akansha intervention that happened and also impacted on various aspects of their life