Greetings to the OPEN community. We are glad to bring you this update on our activities for the first half of 2018.
Spring Fundraiser: Alex in Wonderland
Our fundraising show in March, performed by Alexander Babu, was a great success. Over 400 people attended the show and supported the education of children in India. We thank Alex for the time and effort that he put into making this event a treat for the senses, and we thank the audience and our long-standing contributors for helping us meet our fundraising goal for the event.
Post-secondary education: Ignite Scholarship Program
We supported 120 students through this scholarship program for academic year 2017-18. Students are predominantly in college for B.Com., B.Sc., 3 year Polytechnic, or 4-year Engineering degrees. Most students in this program are poor, with average family income of Rs. 8000 per month. Our budget for the 2017-2018 academic year was $16,100.
We are glad to announce that 39 of the 46 final year studentshave graduated on time. 20 of these 39 graduates have jobs or have enrolled in higher study programs. Given the poverty of these students, graduating is a major success.
Notable among the success stories are Anjana Jayashri, who was second in her graduating class and missed the top rank by 0.02 CGPA; and Santosh Kumar, both from Sri Venkateswara College of Engineering. Anjana chose a job with Vedanta, paying INR 5.5L per year, and Santosh chose a job with Zilker Technologies, paying INR 6.6L per year. There are other children with more middle of the road jobs. We want to reiterate that we focus overall on providing an opportunity to children and on coaching them on interviewing, life skills etc, and the success rate of the program needs to be looked at in context of the challenges faced by the children.
Scholarship applications from new students have been accepted for the 2018-19 academic year, and home visits have been completed for income verification. Counselling and personal interviews have been scheduled on August 5 to complete student selection.
Results-based education: Supplemental Classes by Vidyarambam
We continue working with Vidyarambam Trust to bring their Easy Learning English and Easy Learning Mathematics supplemental programs to partner schools in Chennai. 1400 students from 8 schools were coached in English (classes 6-8) and Math (classes 1-5) during academic year 2017-2018. Vidyarambam were requested to run their programs for the entire school year, up from the 5 months that they were running their programs previously. School administrators see the benefits of the extra coaching that their children get during school inspections - children are vocal and confident when asked to read a passage or do math on the board. Testimonials from the Headmistress, Chennai Primary School, Mullai Nagar, and the Headmistress, Chennai Primary School, Ekkattuthangal, are glowing in praise of Vidyarambam.
Our budget for the 2017-2018 academic year was $26,100, for 1400 students in 8 Chennai schools, at an annual cost/student of $19 approx. Our budget for academic year 2018-19 is $22,000 for 1050 children in 5 Chennai schools, covering English only.
The Easy Learning English coaching pre-post comparisons below show the great improvement in performance of the children from the diagnostic phase to the final test phase. The vast majority of children progress from C grade (red bar) in the diagnostic pre-test, to A grade (green bar) in the final test.
Results-based education: Ashraya libraries, Arts and Science Clubs
The Ashraya Foundation runs libraries and Science and Arts clubs at 9 schools in rural Karnataka. We support librarian salaries and salaries for Arts and Science teachers at 6 of these schools. The reading program is open to all students in classes 4-8, and the Arts and Science clubs are open to the best 20 students in classes 6-8 from each school. The reading level of all students is monitored, and remedial instructions are provided to the bottom 20% of each batch. The best 20 students are enrolled in a Book of the Month Club, and get to pick the best books and do book reports. The top 20 students at each school participate in the Arts and Science clubs. Ashraya are focusing their intervention on approximately the top 10%, and bottom 20%, of students. Our budget for academic year 2018-2019 is $8200, and we support 800 children in 6 schools, at an annual cost/student of approx $10.
The video snippet below shows Ashraya founder Vasuki Subbarao explaining his thinking behind the solar car race project to OPEN's Sriram Sankaran and Ramprasad Santhanakrishnan, who attended Ashraya's annual day.
Ashraya results show that in 2017-18, 67% of the children improved reading by at least one level over the course of the year. In particular, 77% of the students in the remedial reading program saw improvement in reading. Key Ashraya statistics and comparison between 2017 and 2018 are presented below.
Ongoing Projects
We continue our support of Ganapathy Iyer Girls’ Higher Secondary School, Gopalapuram, Chennai, with tuition scholarships for poor children, and operating expenses for after-school classes (chess, karate) and breakfast/evening snacks. This program benefits 170 children. This school reported 100% pass rate in the 10th standard board exams.
The Turning Point Trust aims to improve life skills for the children of slum dwellers in Rotary Nagar, Chennai. A Children's parliament, personality development classes, and first aid training classes are conducted on weekends to coach children on public speaking, and help is provided to perform homework. We are looking to fund expansion of this program to two centers in order to keep kids in school.
We are sponsoring 10 children from the Malleswaram Shishu Vihar, Bangalore, with scholarships for school. We are funding after-school Math tuition classes for standards 6-8 in 3 schools in Bangalore, in collaboration with the Adarsh Colony CSRFoundation. We continue to fund computer teacher salaries at Somasundaram School in rural Tamil Nadu
OPEN key statistics, 2003 - June 2018
The OPEN community has supported over 30,000 students in the past 14 years. A breakdown of grants is shown in the chart above.
OPEN Needs You
OPEN has been registered as a non-profit charitable foundation in India and in the U.S. Contributions in both countries are tax-deductible. As always, our ability to fund these projects depends on your generosity.