Month | Event | Photos of last year |
June | School begins As the schools begin, Asha also hires teachers, assigns them to the schools and start working newly with the new schools if any. This year we have new schools in Cauvery and Mirzapur projects. | |
| Toilet Construction at Palavakkam and Kannigaiper. This will continue through to August. Asha takes up construction or repair work of toilets at schools associated with us for long. | ||
| CS training at each project for new and continuing teachers. Over the academic year, all existing and new Asha teachers are trained in the CS curriculum at regular intervals at Asha project offices. | ||
| Pearl Asha Impressions on 14 June, 2024. Asha Impressions is a competition organized annually to showcase the projects done by students in schools supported by Asha. We generally hold two Asha Impressions, the main one in Chennai for the teams from Thriruvallur, Villupuram and Chennai and another in Kayathar for teams from Thoothukudi.
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| Distribution of used laptops from Amazon to our schools. Asha received 500 laptops donated by Amazon. These laptops have been distributed to various schools across our projects. The laptops are distributed to Asha teachers, Asha RTCs and to government schools. |  | |
| Planning out the scope of all projects of Asha Chennai and allocation of funds for the same. Asha Chennai conducts this annual exercise of planning all its projects starting in April/May and wrap it up by June/July. |  | |
| Inauguration of new RTC at Nalatinpudhur. Asha’s 8th RTC Centre and the third in Thoothukudi District, Tamil Nadu was inaugurated on 14 June, 2024, at Nalattinpudhur near Kovilpatti. RTCs are Rural Technology Centers set up by Asha to enable students in high and higher secondary schools to learn computer courses for free. |  | |
July | Completion of audit of both our Asha Trust accounts and Asha South India accounts. Audit reports from previous years are there in the About Us page. |  |
| Purchase and Distribution of laptops. As many new teachers have been added and many of the laptops that teachers already have had gotten old, we purchased 25 new laptops. These have been given to our teachers to use. |  | |
| Purchase and Distribution of stationery materials. Every year Asha distributes stationery materials for schools and students. This includes things like charts, plain papers and mats for school as well as notebooks, pens, geometry boxes etc. for the students. |  | |
| Purchase and Distribution of uniform kits for teachers. Every year Asha provides two sets of uniforms to all the Asha teachers for the academic year. |  | |
| RTC Impressions – IITM Pravartak and Asha are running 9 Rural Technology Centers. Project work is an important aspect of the courses offered by the RTCs. Children develop a fairly involved project related to their course. We provided the students an opportunity to present their projects to a panel of eminent judges. This is scheduled for July 31st this year. |  | |
| Launch of KaradiPath program at new schools. In October 2022, we introduced the KaradiPath program in 10 schools. This was expanded to over 35 schools in 23-24. It is getting expanded further to about 58 schools this year. The original group of children are now progressing to Level 3. |  | |
August | Remaining student material distributions from July. We will continue the material distribution for schools that had not been covered in July for all our projects. |  |
| A new version of the government teacher training program , ACE V2 with 50+ new schools and teachers will be launched in August across our Sangamam, Thulasi and Pearl project areas. Separate inauguration function and training sessions will be held for these at these three sites. |  | |
| Inauguration of new toilet blocks at Palavakkam and Kannigaiper is likely to happen by August/September 2024. You may read the report on toilet repair and construction work done last year at Thiruvallur, Thoothukudi and Thiruvanamalai. |  | |
September | Black board painting. To remain usable, the blackboards in schools require a fresh coat of paint at least once a year. We undertake the initiative of painting the blackboards in our supported schools spread across our Sangamam, Pearl and Thulasi project areas. |  |
| End of Term I – With exams taking precedence, our teachers reduce their visits to the school and take up content work and other training activities. |  | |
| Annual teacher excursions are organized for all Asha teachers. These excursions are arranged by project, based on the number of teachers in each group. Teachers Day(s) Out |  | |
| Asha for Education is hosting its global conference in Silicon Valley US on Sept 28th and 29th. Asha Chennai will also be participating in it virtually this year. |  | |
October | Training sessions in Math and Science are conducted across all our projects for Asha teachers. These sessions focus on effective pedagogy for teaching these subjects. Mrs. Meena Suresh leads the Math training, while Mrs. Purva Bhatter specializes in Science instruction. |  |
November | Oral Assessments at all supported schools in UP and TN. Every year around October-November, the oral assessments are conducted at various Asha supported schools. The goal of the assessment is to evaluate the basic capabilities of children in primary and high schools. We have been collecting this data across the years from all our schools to help us understand the changes taking place and the impact of our various programs. Oral assessment report 2023 |  |
| Launch of a year-end fund-raising campaign | ||
December | CS training at Thiruvallur for all teachers. All the Asha Chennai computer teachers from Tamilnadu and UP came to Thiruvallur for 3 days for the training training. You may read the report on the training here.
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| End of Term II – As children get busy with exams, our teachers reduce their visits to the school and take up content work and other training activities. |  | |
January | Student excursions at all projects. Over 1600 children from nearly 80 schools had been taken out on excursion with Asha last year. The excursions are usually carried out on Saturdays or Sundays so as to not disturb the working days at Government schools. The excursion is organized with the full support and partnership of the school and the education department. Fun and frolic |  |
| Semester completion at RTCs with project submissions and assessments. As the students complete their course for the term, they are required to submit a project and undergo an assessment to compete it. |  | |
| Government teacher training Under Asha’s ACE program, the government teacher training sessions will continue to be held at periodic intervals throughout the academic year. |  | |
February | Student excursions continue at all projects. Children from our projects in Thiruvallur, Thooothukudi, Thiruvanamalai, Thiruvarur and Chennai continue to go on excusrions. You may View album from 2024 |  |
| Written Assessments at all our projects. The assessments are conducted on a large scale covering over 180 school and 15000 children. The written assessments provide us tools to understand the gaps in education and guides us in our efforts towards bridging these gaps. Report on Assessments in 2024 |  | |
| RTC Impressions for term I of 24-25. At Asha Rural Technology Centers, our terms run from Feb to July and Aug to Jan. Once the Aug to Jan term is completed, the best projects are featured at the RTC Impressions event. RTC Impression Feb 2024 |  | |
| Launch of new RTCs and the start of new semester at existing RTCs. We are planning to launch new ones at Thiruvallur and possibly Uthukottai in Feb 2025. You may view the inauguration of the Kilpennatur RTC here.
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March 2025 | Correction of written assessments. After the written exams, the answer papers collected from one project is sent to one another for correction in order to ensure impartially. Based on the scores, we provide detailed reports to every school. |  |
| Annual day functions at all projects. In schools supported by Asha, we provided snacks and prizes for the children during the annual day function. Our volunteers and coordinators attend these functions and encourage the children. Talent Unplugged |  | |
| Asha India Conference 2025. This is the annual meeting of volunteers and staff from all the Asha India chapters. Each chapter takes turns giving presentation on the work done over the year. Annual meet 2024 |  | |
| Computer assessments – Asha teachers from another school goes and conducts the assessment, which will involve both written and practical questions. Further each student independently takes the assessment on a computer. View post |  | |
| ACE v1 Asha Impressions – The first Asha Impressions for the ACE schools will be held this year. |  | |
| Annual day functions continue. You may read the report on Annual day function celebrated in 2023. |  |
| Submission of projects by all schools. Correction and selection of best presentations and programs. This will happen for Asha supported schools as well as schools where we are working through the government teachers. |  | |
| Assessment reports to all schools. Once the grading of the written tests is completed, we draw out performance report of each school and share them with the respective schools. |  | |
| Wrap up of the accounts for 23-24. In April-May we will wrap up our accounts for the previous year and submit these to our auditors. | ||
| ACE V2 Asha Impressions – Asha Impressions for the next batch of students will be conducted. |  | |
| End of Term III – With the academic year coming to an end, the teachers get busy with content work and other training activities. |  | |
| Asha Impressions in early May – Asha Impressions is a competition showcasing the best projects done by students in the schools supported by Asha. Read the report here. |  |
| Proposals for upcoming year. Start the process of planning for every project and for Asha Chennai as a whole for the year 2025-26. | ||
| RightStart by mid-May – Every year, as the final term ends and the vacations begin at all our supported schools, Asha organizes its annual teacher training event called Rightstart in the month of May. For the last 20 years, except during the 2-year hiatus during Covid, teachers at Asha have gathered for this 5-day event, where external trainers train our teachers in subjects like Math, English and Science. Rightstart 2024 |  | |
| Hiring of new teachers – New teacher hiring is done right once the academic year is over. New hires are encouraged to participate in Rightstart. The teachers take entrance exams in May at all projects. |  |
