Asha Chennai has been working for close to 25 years. Our work is mostly in Tamilnadu. We have also started some work in UP and Maharashtra as an experiment to confirm that the processes and curriculum that we have created and matured in Tamilnadu can also take root elsewhere.
Most of our projects tend to deal with improvements to Government schools. Occasionally we run centres outside of schools and occasionally work with non-governmental schools that are free for the students. These have been a conscious choice by the volunteers. These are explained below.
Our Beliefs
We believe in the following:
- An equal education is an essential prerequisite for an egalitarian society. By equal education we are not talking about straight-jacketing the content or the method of education to one size fits all. We, however, believe in equal access for all children to the education options available in the society.
- The mainstream schooling, when made accessible to all, can cover the educational needs of 90% of all the children. There would still be 10% of the children who cannot be reached through this mainstream education. This would include the disabled, street children, orphans, etc. While Asha Chennai recognizes the important need to address the problems of the society in dealing with the 10%, we have chosen to focus on mainstream education. The majority of the children who fall under this category are currently getting poor quality education.
- Government is the primary vehicle through which universal education can be delivered in a country like India. Every developing and developed nation that has achieved good standards of education for the majority of its people has done this through public education. We do not believe India to be any different. In states like TamilNadu, the reach of the government schools is already quite good but the quality leaves a lot to be desired.
See more details in the presentation Ideas that Drive Asha.
Projects, Programs and Initiatives
At Asha Chennai, we manage the work we do as projects. Each project represents a distinct Geographical area. The work of a project is managed by a steward (volunteer) who is typically assisted by a coordinator (staff) who manages the hiring, purchases and most importantly the relationships with the local school and village officials. We try to bring each project to a minimum of 5 or 8 teachers so that there can be meaningful internal training and new staff can be onboarded without people having to travel from other areas. Budgeting for Asha is done as projects.
A program is a method of implementing an education program. This determines what we would be doing at a school or centre, the curriculum our teachers will be following, the way in which their output will be tracked, how the students’ and the programs’ outcomes will be measured etc. Multiple projects will implement the same program and try their best to implement it within the same parameters.
Initiatives are processes and changes to processes involving training, how we do output and outcome tracking, how we manage assessments etc. which often cross program boundaries as well. These are described below.
Our Initiatives
Here is a short description of some of our initiatives and link to pages that provide more details about the same..
| Asha Kanini | Asha Kanini is a software and collection of contents that Asha Chennai has developed. Asha Kanini allows teachers and content developers to map the contents to curriculum. It currently provides more than 70 very high quality packages like PhET, Geogebra, NLVM, Starfall etc. mapped to Tamilnadu and Maharashtra curriculum. The software is network and OS independent and supports any language. It provides multiple easy to use interfaces for any teacher or student to use. We are also making an LMS available on top of this for students to do self-learning using it. |
| CS Curriculum | Asha Chennai has created several flavours of curriculum that spans Computer Literacy, Programming and these days AI literacy. We have an 8-year curriculum that we teach in primary and middle schools. We have 6-month courses in many advanced topics designed for our RTCs. We created a 2-year curriculum for government teachers to teach in our ACE program etc. |
| Output Trackers | We have developed tools for tracking the work of our teachers and have created a dashboard to show how the teachers are progressing with the curriculum. We also have tools to track our assets. |
| Assessment | Oral and Written assessments are conducted in English, Maths and mother tongue in all our SPRINT schools. Further we have also been conducting CS assessments in all our programs. This provides information for the teachers to evaluate their own progress. We also collect sociological data about the school and the students which enables statistical analyses to understand the factors that affect education. |
| Projects and Rubrics | Every course / CS curriculum we implement devotes 1/4th to 1/3rd of the time to project work. Children develop a substantial project. All the projects are evaluated based on a rubric to help us understand the quality of the work output. The best are evaluated further and brought to various impressions events that provide us an understanding of the impact we are creating. |
| RightStart and Teachers Training | Asha Chennai takes teacher training very seriously. For more than 2 decades we have been conducting the RightStart, a 5-day residential teachers training in May in the IIT Madras campus. For the last 5 years we have also been organising RightStart-CS, a 3-day residential training for CS Teachers conducted in Thiruvallur during the Winter holidays. |
Our efforts with technology and education are documented in the Asha Kanini website
Programs
While Asha Chennai’s programs are all designed to provide education to the underprivileged, our different programs structure, our curriculum and processes are formulated in a manner suitable for the school or learning centre and the kind of children being targeted. Find a description of our various programs below.
| SPRINT | SPRINT or Support for Primary (and Middle) schools In Nurturing Talent is a new name for our oldest project. From our inception in 2003, we have adopted government primary and middle schools and provided them teachers, materials and other support in various forms to improve the education at the schools. We currently support more than 200 schools across 3 states as a part of this program. |
| RTC | We started the first two Rural Technology Centres (RTCs) in Jan 2022 with support from IIT Madras. As of the end of 2026, there are 14 RTCs across 5 districts of Tamilnadu. Best Computer Science and Technology education is being provided for students in classes 6 to 12 at these centres. |
| Explore | Explore program implemented through the Asha trainers represents our scale initiative. They provide a basic introduction to CS, AI and career options to students in classes 6 to 9. Each trainer introduces these topics to about 2000 students in 20 schools for 3 to 6 hours a year. While the Explore program also adds value to the students, it paves the way for other programs such as ACE described below. |
| ACE | ஆஷா வழி கணினி கல்வி or Asha Computer Education (ACE) is scalable initiative to take Asha’s way of teaching computer science and our curriculum to all the students in Tamilnadu. Asha trained more than 130 teachers from as many Government Schools to teach a 2-year curriculum for Computer Science designed by Asha Chennai. The pilot program was extremely successful. It gives us the understanding and confidence to engage with the government’s own computer science and AI programs. |
| Mini-schools | When Covid struck, the school closure created tremendous damage to the education and development of all the children. Rather than just accept this as inevitable, Asha started mini-schools to serve these children in small centres in the children’s hamlets. At the peak we were running 60+ mini-schools covering 2200+ students! The things we learnt here are still influencing our libraries and our Arogyam program. |
| Arogyam | Even among the remote rural areas we work with, some hamlets are really stark in their poverty. In these places we run the Arogyam program to augment the nutrition the children get by giving them a protein rich snack in the evening and also improve their education through an hour of instruction modelled after our mini-schools. |
| Libraries | Asha Chennai runs 11 libraries for children in remote rural hamlets. The librarians try to develop the book-reading habit among the children by reading books aloud to the children. Libraries also regularly conduct science experiments, craft activities etc. to improve their learning. These are often paired with a school. Librarians sometimes do their work during school library hours. |
Current Projects:
Here is a short description of current and approved Asha Chennai projects.
School Improvement Projects:
| Poorna Vidhya | Through this project we work with four Chennai City Corporation schools and schools in the Gooduvancheri area of Kanchipuram District. Computer teachers go to all these schools, and regular teachers have been appointed at some of them. The KaradiPath spoken English program is also taking place in some schools. |
| Project Sangamam-Thiruvallur | We started this project in 2004-05 in Thiruvallur district. Under the SPRINT program, we now work with about 90 Government schools across the Poondi, Ellapuram, Kadambathur and Thiruvalangadu blocks of Thiruvallur and the Sriperumbudur block of Kanchipuram District. Computer teachers go to all these schools, and regular teachers have been provided to some. The KaradiPath spoken English program covers about 50 schools. Explore, ACE and RTC programs have also been launched here, reaching hundreds of schools and thousands of children. Two libraries and four Arogyam centres are also supported in the Sangamam area. |
| Project Pearl | Project Pearl supports more than 25 schools under the SPRINT program in Thoothukudi, Thirunelveli and Then Kasi districts. Two kindergartens, one balwadi (pre-primary educational centre) and four community libraries are also run in remote villages. Explore, ACE and RTC programs are also implemented as part of the Pearl project. |
| Project Thulasi | Project Thulasi started with a tuition centre at Seeyapoondi, a remote village in Villupuram district, and went on to support Government schools in Villupuram and Thiruvannamalai districts. It currently supports about 30 schools under the SPRINT program. Five libraries are also run as part of the project. Explore and ACE programs are implemented here, and one RTC is run at Kilpennathur. |
| Project Cauvery | Project Cauvery was started to replicate our Computer Science education and technology-aided education in schools around Mannargudi in Thiruvarur district. We currently support about 20 schools under the SPRINT program. The Explore program also started here in 2026-27. |
| Project Sangamam Rajatalab | Asha has a long presence near Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh. The Asha team in Rajatalab reached out to Asha Chennai to replicate our Government school support work, and we currently support 15 schools there under the SPRINT program. In the separate Project Sangamam Mirzapur, we began work to implement the Computer Science education part of SPRINT and currently assist about 10 schools in this among the poorest districts of Uttar Pradesh. |
| Project Sangamam Mirzapur | Mirzapur is among the poorest of UP districts. When a long term grassroots worker of Asha expressed his interest in working with Asha Chennai to implement the CS education part of the SPRINT program there, we were happy to start there. We currently assist about 10 schools in the area. |
Projects that aid the School Improvement Projects:
| Project RightStart | This project covers our teacher training initiative, including funding for the RightStart training program in May and the RightStart-CS Computer Science training program in December. |
| Project Asha Kanini | This project covers the Asha Kanini software initiative and funds the software development team, server and Internet costs, experimental hardware, and expenses related to Computer Science curriculum and other content development. |
| Project Sugadharam | Many of the schools Asha Chennai supports do not have adequate toilet facilities. In schools without toilets, children are sent home to nearby fields when they need to use them, which is an even bigger problem for middle schools. Poor toilet facilities are also unhygienic for children. Asha works with donors to repair or renovate toilets where possible, or build new ones where needed. |
| Project Arogyam | This project implements the Arogyam program and covers the funding for nutrition support, as well as the teachers’ and cooks’ salaries for running the program. |
| Amazon Learn and Explore | Amazon funds the SPRINT program at 55 schools (Amazon Learn) and the entire Explore program, with 35 trainers reaching more than 60,000 students in six districts. Amazon also funded the ACE pilot, which covered more than 5,000 students in over 125 schools. |
Other Projects :
| Asha Scholarship | Asha Chennai identifies children from under-privileged backgrounds attending different schools and colleges and matches them with donors for scholarships covering tuition fees, books, uniforms and other needs. About 80% of the students are from in and around Chennai; the rest are from other parts of Tamil Nadu. |
| Project Manigal | Project Manigal aims to promote education as a tool to change the marginal status of the gypsies. We work with Narikoravas settled in two colonies in Chennai at Indiranagar and Kottur. |
| Rural Technology Centres | This project funds the RTC program, a joint initiative of IIT Madras and Asha to bring quality technology education to high and higher secondary schools in remote rural areas. It funds nine of the 14 RTCs currently running; the others are funded by IITM Pravartak. |