This year Anuva Chawla of class XI and Divya Sijwali of class X of Tagore International School, Vasant Vihar, took over Project Sehpaathi, with the sole aim of working towards the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals 3, 4, and 5 namely “Ensure Healthy Lives for all”, to“Ensure Inclusively and Equitable Quality Education and Promote Lifelong Learning Opportunities for all”, and to “Achieve Gender Equality”. We aim to foster and develop seamless learning and growth opportunities for the less privileged during Covid-19.
Diversity is not only about what background a person comes from but everything else that contributes to making them the unique individual that they are. Being Tagoreans has always pushed us towards becoming empathetic human beings. We believe in inclusion, the inclusion of all! Hence we chose to work together with the Acid Attack survivors, the LGBTQIA+ community & various EWS school students as well, thereby impacting all sections of society.
Tagore International School, Vasant Vihar (TIS, VV) has adopted Samarpan School Foundation years ago and since then we have been working very closely with their students. Several students have been contributing to this relationship. Our school has helped Samparan School, a school for the underprivileged in several ways, by contributing both academically and non-academically and forming personal relations with the teachers and students along the way. With this situation of the Pandemic, we once again reached out to our counterparts in the Samarpan School and tried to propagate the above stated Sustainable Development Goals in the highly challenging times of Covid-19.
For the past several months, students of TIS, VV have been conducting online classes for Samarpan School students. We also reached out to Navo Vidyalaya School students and Sanshil Foundation students. These sessions are on educational, co-curricular, and health-related topics. Through these sessions, we have aimed to guide our Navo Vidyalaya, Samarpan School, and Sanshil Foundation students to a healthier lifestyle, tried to improve upon their holistic education, and have sought to make gender equality an openly and freely discussed topic.
As project heads, Anuva and Divya, along with their team began by making videos for school students of class 10th, 11th, and 12th through which they explained academic concepts that would help the students with limited resources to study. A window for doubts to be asked and answered was also kept open through direct communication. Soon, we developed this idea into one of the weekly sessions for the students, so we could not only work on the bookish knowledge but cover all aspects of education. In the first few sessions, we worked to manufacture a comfortable environment for all the students and create an affinity among them. We had sessions on topics such as Soft Skills, Public Speaking, Interview Skills, and eloquent delivery, all of which help students in inevident but imperative ways. We also incorporated several customized activities trying to incorporate learning in the sessions in a fun and interesting way. After every session, we send Google feedback forms so that we learn to improve, what they want to learn, and how much they learned from the session!
A part of these sessions was also dedicated to direct conversations between the students of the schools where they all speak about general issues they face in daily life, and personal solutions, by means of which both parties have major takeaways from the sessions. Topics such as hygiene, physical well-being, mental health, anxiety, stress, and the like have been touched base upon. Sessions with an aim to create a dialogue about ‘Gender Equality’ were also conducted wherein students shared their personal experiences and vocalized their thoughts and feelings. These experiences were indeed very inspiring for all listeners. The most heartwarming part of this session was the fact that everyone present agreed that the social bias on the basis of gender was wrong, giving us hope for a non-discriminatory society in the future.
These sessions have been mutually beneficial for the students of Tagore International School, Vasant Vihar, and the students of the other schools we have worked with. A clear leap is seen in the students of these schools, in literary and well as unscholarly fields. Students are now better at communicating, have clear ideas on how to put forward their views, have a better-balanced lifestyle, and are eager to be heard and wish to drive a change in society. While our efforts over the past few months have paid off, we believe there is still a lot to be done. The positive feedback we received from other students was truly encouraging for us.
We also created our very own web page on grammar topics for their ease. This was done to make a personalized web page that the students could access and understand the concepts according to their existing level of English.
Under the Sehpaathi Project, we also worked with Acid Attack survivors and members of the LGBTQIA+ community. We wished to promote self-esteem and self-confidence among them. We also included topics like how to speak English fluently, public speaking in the session. We try to keep the sessions as interactive as possible by including some activities and questions in the presentation we made. The attendees also ask some very interesting questions. The main language of such sessions is Hindi upon the request of the foundations we are collaborating with and in order to make them understand more, we simplified a lot of words. The session also comprises a part where we give them tips by sharing our own experiences, stories, and show them videos to make the concept easier. As mentioned earlier the learning process is always two-ways in such sessions. These sessions turned out to be enriching for both the students and the attendees as it led to positive team building activities and fun conversational exchanges.
With our help and guidance, we helped the acid attack survivors from the Chhanv foundation to organize their very own session on the occasion of teacher’s day and this shows the success of our project.
Through our Sehpaathi project blog, we got connected to UNODC South Asia, and with them; we celebrated SDG week with government schools and also a skill exchange session with other schools to spread awareness about SDGs.
We organized a fundraiser for our project by collaborating with another initiative of our school, the Society of Caretakers of Heritage (SOCH) on 8th November 2020. We planned to have a virtual walk to Rani Ki Vav, a site located in Gujarat, as a part of our fundraiser event. The entry fee was kept at a nominal of Rs.20 and people were asked to make the payment online through Paytm. Through this, we promoted the rich heritage of India as well as the need to conserve the monuments. The funds raised were donated to Samarpan Foundation to procure books, stationery items, sanitary napkins, etc.
Overall, our biggest takeaway from the project can be captured in the quote, “Do the right thing, do the best you can, and always show people you care”. We would just like to end by saying that it was a wonderful opportunity for us to educate people about something new and we personally got to know a lot of things indeed and are planning a lot more things for the coming months!
What and article!!!!! Loved it
Great efforts put in for the welfare of the society