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"You don't just teach a kid to read, you don't educate a kid for employment alone; these are mere activities! What you do is leave an impression on a life and in the process you create a gem of character”

During your stay at the SIC campus, you must have seen young kids in the evening playing in the atrium, as some of your batch mates cajoled them to the classes and then the learning started for the day. Let us introduce you then, to Inspirit!

INSPIRIT is a committee, run by the students of Symbiosis Centre for Management and Human Resource Development (SCMHRD), Pune, which focuses on quality education of children from poor sections of the society, giving them guidance and inculcating moral values with special attention towards developing their overall personality. Founded in 2008 (as Prayatna), Inspirit has grown from a committee catering to the needs of 8 students to now catering to over 40 students, 6 days a week. We also work on creating awareness amongst parents with respect to Education and Hygiene and make them a responsible stakeholder in their child’s development.

VISION

• A future where the possibilities, opportunities and dreams of children are not hampered by their economic status. Inspirit believes when you change a child’s life, you change a family’s, which can change a community and ultimately change the world.

EVENING TUTORIAL PROGRAM

Our Evening Tutorial Program is customized to suit each child’s profile to understand his/her aspirations, interests and problem areas which require special attention. We constantly monitor their academic progress and promote engagement in activities like sports, painting workshop, personality development and educational movies which help them explore their creative side and channel the same creativity in the right direction.

On an average the student volunteers spend about 500 contact hours per annum with the children. The volunteers comprises of the senior and the junior students of the full time graduate MBA program of SCMHRD.

TEACHING METHODOLOGY

The teaching plan and strategy is customized to suit each student (beneficiary) profile. The entire volunteer team gets together and talks to the child in order to understand his/her aspirations, subject preferences, difficulties and problem areas. This helps the team to gauge the starting point for beginning the training intervention. Another challenge that the team often encounters is the poor level/understanding of spoken and written English among kids more so since they come from vernacular backgrounds. In such cases the basics of English language such as phonics are used. A teaching plan is prepared for each child after the in-depth interview with the child and after based upon the feedback of the team members. A register and excel worksheets are maintained by the team in order to manage the process effectively. Detailed logs about the attendance, topics/chapters covered, evaluations, marks, syllabus covered per student are maintained. Maintaining detailed records per child prevents repetition of topics and subjects. More importantly detailed observations and notes about the progress of each child along with special precautions (if any) help the volunteer team members to function effectively and improve the learning experience for the child. Every day the volunteers spend 2 hours (18:30 Hrs to 20:30 Hrs) with the children. Despite a very rigorous schedule the volunteers plan and adjust the teaching time-table slots such that all the team members are able to conduct this activity without missing out on their own classes, assignments and evaluations. Saturdays are assigned for ‘learning-through-fun’ activities like showing educational videos, having sessions in drawing, art and music. The volunteer team strives to make learning an enjoyable experience for these kids more so since they come from challenging backgrounds while ensuring that they are able to make the child learn at his/her pace in an interactive manner. The two hours that these kids spend on the campus of SCMHRD is the only time that they usually get to ‘live their age’ before they get back into an environment where more often than not- they become an extra pair of hands engaged in some income augmentation activity.