Asha Chennai

Asha once again started our mini-schools after the extended summer closure due to the second wave of Covid. The first mini-schools once again started in mid June 2021 and by end of July most of the 60+ mini-schools have opened again.

Academic Year 2020-21 was a complete wash-out. The schools remained closed the entire year. Asha’s Mini-schools could continue the education for 1800 students the whole year. It was a year of struggles and innovation in our mini-school. Read our detailed report for all the information.

The teacher reports are all here: Ariyappkam – Thenmozhi Elanthapatti – saraswathidevi Kamagaram – Nithya Kannigaipair – Santhameena Nandhimangalam – Ramya Nandhivaram – Philomena Old Panapakkam – Kumari Old Thirupachur – Iswarya Pandur – Rajkumari Thirukovilur – Sathya TV Pet – Jayalakshmi

Asha Chennai conducted oral assessments at all the mini-schools we were running in Nov 2020 with specific goal of understanding the effectiveness of our mini-schools in stopping the slide in education.

Rajaram, the steward for Project Sangamam visited mini-schools in mid-April. Here is a detailed report about our mini-school at Pondhavakkam which he visited.

John Crane funds Pravartak, a Section 8 company launched by IIT Madras to take Asha Kanini to all schools in Thiruvallur District.

Our coordinator Rajaraman wrote an article on school closures that was published by The Hindu Open Page.

ACSYS Investments has chosen to fund Project Poorna Vidhya as part of their CSR initiative.

Rajaram visited more Sangamam mini-school in Thiruvallur and also the Poorna Vidhya mini-schools in Guduvancheri in Dec 2020. Our Maths trainer Mrs. Meena Suresh also accompanied him in visiting some of the mini-schools.

Two of Asha Chennai’s volunteers Bhaskar and Rajaram visited the Project Pearl mini-schools and libraries on November 19th and 20th.

Core Solution Inc. donated 12 computers to Asha to be given to deserving students. The computers were donated on 23rd Nov to students in desperate need of a computer because of the remote classes during these pandemic times.

The Hindu wrote a detailed article on Asha Chennai’s mini-schools.

With several restrictions placed on government schools, they are not able to open to children. Further teaching through video conference is not a possibility in these schools. Asha Chennai has created contents for continuing the education under these restrictions.

With the restrictions imposed by Covid, Asha Chennai is continuing the work of educating the Narikorava colony children through hybrid strategies.

With our mini-schools taking on more responsibilities towards teaching the textbook contents, the mini-schools needed a blackboard. We painted them at 12 mini-schools to start with.

Asha Chennai is continuing to run mini-schools. With lowering concerns about Covid we have been able to start 45+ mini-schools. With schools still not open, mini-schools are teaching the contents of their textbooks as well.

Asha Chennai is continuing to run mini-schools. Due to greater demand from the communities, we are now running more mini-schools (24 mini-schools at the end of August).

June 2020: As the schools remain shut down thanks to the Covid-19 pandemic, Asha Chennai is running mini-schools in the villages that we support where we also have local teachers.

Hyundai Glovis that supports our Project Sangamam in Thiruvallur district has donated 100 used computers to be given to the schools we support.

We painted the blackboard at over 30 schools belonging to Project Sangamam during Feb 2020..

Excursions were organised for 4th and 5th standard children from 23 schools to Birla Planetarium and Guindy Park and for 7th and 8th std children from 7 schools to Senji and Thiruvannamalai. This was sponsored by Hyundai Glovis.

Asha Chennai conducted written assessments at all the 99 supported schools. Teachers were trained and exams conducted in a rigorous manner at all the schools.

With support from Trimble we carried out renovation to toilets at the middle schools in Kumaragiri and Athikinaru in Thoothukudi District.

With support from Hyundai Glovis we distributed sports dresses, chappals and hygiene kits to all the 61 schools supported by them.

Asha Chennai organised an excursion for our teachers to Mysore from Dec 27th to 29th to have fun as well as gain exposure.

Training sessions were held over 3 days for all the computer teachers of Asha Chennai.

Asha Chennai conducted oral assessments in all the 96 supported schools in November 2019.