Akshara calls for people to participate in the Millenium Development Goals!

Akshara is participating in a consultation to augur people’s voices in the context of Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) conducted by the Bangalore Rural Education and Development Society (BREADs) on 17th June 2013 in Bangalore.

As we all know, MDGs is a set of 8 targets (with specified indicators) that were developed as an overarching agenda to arrest poverty in the world. With 2015 being the target set to achieve these goals, it is now time to review the reach, relevance and the need to rework on the framework to guide the process post 2015. The Consultation is an effort to bring together people’s voices and identify their priorities.

There are limited seats available for people aware of and interested  in these issues  to join this consultation. If you have something to say and would like to join the consultation, please send an email to vikas@akshara.org.in by 10th June to confirm your participation.

Teach For India looking for interns in Kolkata!

From our friends from Teach For India

Teach for India is currently in 5 cities - Mumbai, Pune, Delhi,Hyderabad and Chennai. We wish to expand our operations to 10 cities by 2015-16 cities. For this purpose we are conducting a feasibility research on several cities in India, one out of which is Kolkata.

To expand in any site, we would would like to understand the demographics of the site, the state of education in the site and the probability of getting funds to run the Teach For India fellowship program at the site. The

Expansion Intern's responsibilities will be to gather information and recommend an action plan for expansion in

Kolkata.

We would need to invest and collect information from three important

stakeholders -

1. The Municipal Education department

2. Private school leaders

3. Corporates/High net worth Individuals.

The internship duration is three weeks. The internship is a part-time unpaid internship ( 4-5 hours per day). However, all expenses incurred for the internship (Travel within city, telephone calls made and internet usage charges for the project) will be reimbursed. 

Please note that Teach For India will be unable to reimburse the expenses incurred for accommodation within the city.

The intern will also receive an Internship Experience letter on successful completion of the internship.

Please contact John Mathai to apply or for more information.

Designing the New Map Portal.

Cross posting from my entry in the geohackers.in blog

I recently rewrote the maps portal for the Karnataka Learning Partnership. The map is an important part of our project, action and process because it serves as the pivot point of navigation. I will quickly talk about the data and tools before we discuss the design aspects.

We have a fairly large dataset of schools in Karnataka. The name of the school, location, number of girls and boys etc. in a database. Fortunately, the data was clean and properly stored in a PostgreSQL database with PostGIS extensions. Most of my task was to modify the API to throw GeoJSON to the client using the ST_AsGeoJSON function and export the data.


We used the amazing Leaflet.js library and a wide range of plugins. Most of the UI elements are from Twitter's Bootstrap. I cannot say that Leaflet and Bootstrap works well all the time, but in case you want to add something on the map, make sure that you use extend leaflet's control layer. For instance, see how we added the Stop Drawing control.
We made several design decisions mostly inspired by the series of blog posts by Brian Timoney.



Show only the required information - depending on the zoom level, we show the user relevant information at that level. For instance, the district layer will be hidden on a zoom level beyond 8, clusters and projects are not shown beyond 10. At the same time, the user is free to turn these layers on from the layer control on the right side. In case you are curious how to do this, here's the bit of code that does this trick.



Clustered markers - based on location, the markers are clustered. This makes the map much intuitive than laying out all the markers outright. There are several performance aspects of doing this though. Clustering gives the user a birds-eye view of how the data is spread over the locations.


Search - a very easy to use search bar is employed. Search is absolutely the best feature that any maps portal should offer. It helps the user quickly find his location of interest than pan the map around. In a way, search will take the user to the exact information that he/she is looking for.



Filter - suppose the user wants to find one particular school in an area well known to him. The filter tool on the portal does just this. It will help the user filter the data according to different levels and the map will change its view whenever the user selects an attribute. You are more than welcome try this out yourself. Just click the filter icon on the right side.

Bounding circle - we've often seen our users wanting to find schools within a particular distance from their point of interest. We incorporated the Bounding circle tool which lets the user draw a circle on the map, and it will load all the schools in that region. More over, it will also list all the schools  as drop down on the left side of the map.



Locate the user - upon loading, the map portal will ask the user for his/her location, if it's available, the map will change its view to that particular location and load the data. This gives more context to the volunteers at KLP. If you are starting out to build a map portal and are looking for a real world example, the maps might be a good place for you to start. Also, don't forget to check the code!

‘Together, We Can’: An initiative by Akshara Foundation

Akshara Foundation launched ‘Together, we can’, a campaign to highlight success stories of anganwadis and government primary schools and the necessity to replicate such models throughout the state and the country. The event was organized at the Bangalore International Centre on Thursday.

The former Additional Chief Secretary of the Government of Karnataka, Dr. Chiranjeevi Singh, presided over the event and shared some key learning’s from the success of government led initiatives in education and with the ICDS scheme. He also stressed on the importance of learning outcomes and overall development of children. Eminent personalities from the city were present along with distinguished figures from several NGOs, schools, academic and research institutes.  The panel discussions at the event brought to light the necessity for collaboration among various stakeholders. 

Ashok Kamath, Chairman, Akshara Foundation reiterated the key findings of the Annual Status of Education Report, emphasizing the poor learning outcomes of students. He said, “Educating children is a social responsibility which rests on ALL of us – parents, teachers, schools, government, ordinary citizens, corporates, industry, academia and the media. The need of the hour is to bring these various stakeholders together to collaborate and put a collective effort into our education system. This collective effort is not just about enrolling children in school but also ensuring they learn well. Here, the onus and accountability lies with us.”

“Every child has the right to be educated and it is our duty to provide quality education to each child. Quality education can be imparted only if we have a sound and efficient system that understands the learning needs of children,” said Kanchan Bannerjee, Managing Trustee, Akshara Foundation. “Akshara Foundation has championed the cause of access to quality pre-school and elementary education as a fundamental pillar for the holistic development of children.   Akshara Foundation’s programmes and initiatives are designed to improve overall learning outcomes and are easily scalable and replicable anywhere.”

The scope of the event reflects Akshara Foundation’s efforts to replicate the collaborative model of education across Karnataka and to make early education a top priority for the state government. ‘Together, We Can’ is a focused effort to extend a helping hand to all individuals and organizations that work towards this common goal.


What does Akshara Foundation do?

Akshara Foundation was established in the year 2000 with a mission to ensure that every child is in school and learning well. Over the last thirteen years, Akshara has run multiple programs that have all been designed to be comprehensive, scalable and cost-effective solutions – both remedial and supplementary education models. All Akshara’s programs are child-centric and are designed to ensure that enrolment in schools increase, drop-outs from schools decrease and that children’s learning outcomes and overall development improve. To date, Akshara Foundation has impacted over 800,000 children in the state of Karnataka with its programmes and has successfully engaged with the government-run anganwadis and government primary schools across Bangalore and also in rural Karnataka especially in Koppal, Gadag and Dharwad districts.
Akshara works in close partnership with the Education Department of the Government of Karnataka and the Department of Women and Child Welfare to supplement existing primary school and pre-primary school programs. 

Share your Story, Help make Schools Better!

Ever wanted to volunteer and help out at government preschools and primary schools in Karnataka but didn't know where to start? http://www.klp.org.in can help. Come engage with us.

The TCS W10K Run is back! Are you ready to Run?

The Tata Consultancy Services World 10K Run 2013 is back and Bangalore is getting ready to run again. The race has been accorded the IAAF Gold Label Road Race status, the highest rating for road races from the IAAF. The run starts and ends at the Sree Kanteerava Stadium. The competition was first held in 2008 and this year will take place on the 19^th May 2013.

Akshara Foundation participated in the 10K run last year and we are all set to run again this year. So join us and help us promote the importance of Pre-school education in Government Anganwadis. Donate, fundraise or simply run for us and help make a difference in your own little way.  Funds collected through the Run will be used to improvise pre-school programmes in Bangalore and Dharwad, impacting over 25,000 children.

A good pre-school and primary education is the foundation to a stronger education and learning. Help us in our crusade to educate children with concepts and techniques will help them learn for a lifetime and not just for the exams. Help these kids realize their dreams with a good education. Help us run this cause !

So will you support Akshara in this cause?

To Run / Donate / Raise funds for Akshara Foundation through the TCS W10K Run 2013, write to us at volunteer@akshara.org.in

Happenings at the Tranquil Charitable Foundation.

The spanking new GHPS building

Srinivas Padmanabharao wrote to us about the happenings at the Tranquil Charitable Foundation (TCF). The year at TCF started on a happy note.  The sustained efforts over past three years finally bore some sweet fruits. Everyone at the Tranquil Charitable trust were delighted to have finally been able to move the children of Classes IV - VII at Gubbalala Higher Primary School (GHPS) to a new building in a much quieter neighbourhood and with working toilet facilities.  The new building was constructed by the local government authorities as per the guiding mandate. TCF did not invest any of the donations in the building construction activities. They are now taking the lead in equipping the building with the needed educational infrastructure - tables, chairs, books, library, computers, etc.

For those of you who may not have heard of Srinivas Padmanabhrao’s involvement & about TCF here is a brief overview.  TCF is a not-for-profit organization that was registered by Srinivas Padmanabhrao with a couple of friends (now the trustees) about 3 years ago. The main aim was to focus their energies on making a meaningful difference in the delivery of public education, especially primary schools, where they live in Bangalore.  In that endeavour, they've adopted one specific school - Gubbalala Higher Primary School (GHPS) which has approx. 150 students upto Grade 7 and TCF does everything it can to help make the school a productive and fun experience - right from augmenting teaching staff & infrastructure to providing the students with books, uniforms, shoes and the like, taking them on picnics, etc.  All students come from an underprivileged background and the school charges no fees.

 TCF looks forward to support and guidance as they undertake the next set of activities to make GHPS a model for government - citizen partnership in the field of primary education.  If you wish to make a financial donation to support our activities, please reach out to them and they will provide you the necessary details.  As an 80G certified organization, all donations qualify for tax benefits per Government of India tax regulations.

 So make a small difference in your own way and make a contribution to TCF! Help spread the light and warmth of education.