The "School in Cloud" Program
Government schools in Tamil Nadu, India are the most economical and feasible mode to seek education for kids from economically disadvantaged backgrounds. However, due to infrastructure and lack of better learning opportunities for English, Math & Computer Science, there are high dropouts from Government schools. The parents bear the burden of loans from private lenders to ensure quality education for their children's bright future. This puts a debt burden on parents, and Government schools are often shut down due to a very low strength of students, which leads to the deprivation of social justice for the children of daily wage earners and farming communities.
The “School in Cloud” program tries to eradicate this concern by taking English and Computer classes through Skype for the students in government schools. This enables children who cannot afford private schools to continue their education in Government schools and safeguards parents from the burden of debt.
Online Classes are an easy way for volunteers across the globe to reach out & contribute to society with a commitment of just one hour a week. Our initiative leverages technology to connect volunteers from various parts of the world with the students, which acts as a motivational factor & an exciting mode of learning for them. The initiative has also enabled many Government school teachers to have an opportunity to learn the usage of technology and Computers.
Our Reach: We conduct classes in 38 Government schools in remote villages of Tamil Nadu, India, across 13 Districts covering over 5000 Students every week. Over 3475 person-hours of effort are put in by 180 Teaching and Non-Teaching volunteers per month. This sustained initiative not only brings education to kids at no expense to their parents but also establishes a highly repeatable model that can be deployed at scale.
Since permission from the District Education Officer was available, the headmasters were very cooperative in enabling the sessions. We can very clearly see the development of students' confidence in interacting with new people, learning the language, & improvement in communication along with thought processes.
Smart Classes & Our Tutors
Young Volunteer: Vrishank Taking Class
Young Vrishank has been taking Storytelling classes for the Govt school students in Panchayat union Elementary school, Perumapatti, Bommasamuthiram post, Sendhamangalam Taluk, Namakkal Dist. Our OVOR team highly appreciates and feels very proud of Vrishank!
School Sessions in the News & Feedback
Our team got mentioned in the news... We are very grateful for this opportunity. On behalf of the Our Village Our Responsibility Team, we thank all the teachers and especially our volunteers without whom none of this would have been possible. Special mention to Kandhasamy Sir and Sivakumar Anna who enabled this opportunity for us.
Session to a new school in Thanjavur district
Happy to inform you all that we are starting our session to a new school in Thanjavur district. We completed our first demo session on their Inauguration day. Pictures from smart classroom interaction with 9th Standard English medium students in GHSS, Illupaithoppu. Thanks to the Rotary Club, NGO 'Seedhanam', School representative Mr. Venkatesh, and Mr. Dillepen (volunteer from OVOR) for making this event possible!
How Schools Can Join
We are happy to add government school students from your native village under our VIRTUAL CLASSROOM sessions program. Since the pandemic hit, we understood the hardships students have been facing, hence we have started covering all subjects for both Tamil & English mediums.
To join: All we need is a request letter with a school seal sent to Ourvillageourresponsibility@gmail.com. In the letter, share with us highlights of the school, background of the students, parents' occupation, number of students in each class, expected time/day of sessions & subjects to be covered.
Infrastructure required: Laptop with a projector, speaker, mic, and internet (or a phone with WhatsApp & internet for individual students). We will start the sessions in 2 weeks if connectivity works!
