Asha Boston started funding the Mobile Science Van in 2009, supporting a new idea from SVYM to address the issue that high school students in government schools were unable to do science as labs in high schools were non-existent or non-functional. The only Science content they had access to was static textbook pages, without any opportunity to work hands-on on a Science project. The initiative started with Asha Boston funding a van to visit 19 government high schools in HD Kote taluk in Mysore district.
Asha Boston then applied for and got a grant from Oracle to expand the program to all government middle schools in HD Kote taluk. The grant helped acquire a new van for the middle schools and helped spark interest in science in all the middle schools that led to the 19 high schools.
The vans were a success – children and teachers welcomed the arrival of a van with great enthusiasm, and it was very exciting for the children to do hands-on work. The facilitators in the vans also taught classes if there were Science teacher positions vacant.
The program began to have an unexpected side effect in identifying government school teachers who were keen to improve themselves but had no guidance whatsoever. It was eye opening for us that such teachers existed – most people dismiss government school teachers as ‘useless,’ but here were were highly motivated teachers who wanted to learn! Some in this group have gone to be rock stars – they won awards and are highly respected in their schools, and they have also become proponents for creating labs in their schools. Here is an article that profiles one of them, who has gone on to do amazing things, including winning the Karnataka State Award for teaching last year.
The teachers have gone on to create interesting labs, including a lab for Maths that typically doesn’t exist in schools. They created opportunities for learning by doing of their own accord. And became resource persons for other teachers.
Asha Boston then helped fund an expansion in nearby Nanjangud taluk, and then neighboring Kodagu district. Note that the amount Asha Boston funded remained more or less the same, we just kept changing the focus depending on the need and ideas of SVYM. As the project grew other corporations wanted to be involved. McAfee foundation, Qualcomm foundation are some examples. When an idea is successful funding avenues open up. Nothing succeeds like success.
Praveen’s leadership at SVYM has played a critical role. Praveen, started his education work at SVYM with the mobile science van project and now is the head of all education activities at SVYM. Under his leadership he made connections to other education projects run by SVYM, bringing them together as a coherent whole, as he writes here.
Praveen then replicated the model in Dharwad district in Karnataka. Here is a video from that work. Asha is not involved in funding that program, but Praveen credits the initial funding from Asha for all subsequent developments. Says he, “Asha’s funding was critical for our experiments. None of the other donors let us play around with an idea.”
Along the way we have sometimes stepped in when there was an urgent need. Post pandemic the foundation supporting the Mobile Science Van Kodagu district did not continue right away. Asha Boston identified a donor to support the program for one year, giving SVYM time to find other funding.
One Asha chapter can never fund large projects like this. But with strategic partnerships, with the tried and tested model of working with new ideas and small organizations, of considering project partners as real partners and friends (not as donor recipients with interactions limited to reviewing reports and financial statements) we can create larger scale impact.