RCB Hits Reboot On Bhavishya Yaan

Bhavishya Yaan, a project conceived and implemented by PP Ramesh Narayan and a few dedicated and diehard Rotarians is one such sustainable initiative.

It has grown and expanded into six schools and brought meaning and opportunity to many children who passed through its well-intentioned doors.

Our partners Vidya valiantly supported our mandate to teach the children spoken English and life skills and to introduce them to a world of opportunities hitherto unavailable to them. The success was measured by the number of children who were brought out of their limited worlds into a more expansive one.

For 11 long years, this initiative was fairly successful, supported and coordinated by six dedicated and caring mentors, all of whom were none other than our own Rotarian Partners.

These ladies gave their time, energy and hearts to this project, physically visiting the schools, often every day. The computer classes which were offered alongside were very often the main draw for the children. Until the pandemic hit. The project was hit with its own set of issues. Children had difficulty logging on to the online classes we started.

They were distracted and lost focus. The Vidya teachers had their own challenges, and BY went into a bit of a tailspin.

At the beginning of the year, I attended one such class, and found the teacher trying her best to teach the concept of alliteration to children who were distracted, uninterested and in a completely different mind space.

When had we moved from the mandate of spoken English to grammar?
And why? At this point, we were trying to achieve the impossible.

We needed a relook at the entire programme to see how we could get back to the original mandate of spoken English etc.

I strongly felt that for the large amount of donors’ money being spent, we needed to ensure that each child got the best instruction, and that we were getting the results we were paying for.

So, together with Rtn. Ulhas Yargop and PE Vineet Bhatnagar, we decided to set a new mandate of spoken English, Math, life skills, and digital literacy and to find the best way to achieve this.
With the interest of the children upper most in our minds, and the responsibility of spending the donors’ funds in the best way possible, we shortlisted five possible new partners and asked them to make us a presentation that encompassed the new mandate.

Vidya was also asked to review and present a fresh approach.

Last October, we spent some days meeting each partner on Zoom, going through each presentation and then choosing one partner who we felt could best support the children and the mandate we had provided.

It was with some discussion and deliberation that we chose Naandi of the Mahindra group to work with us on a pilot.

Omicron reared its fangs again and the pilot that was to start in January did not begin until mid- February and that, too, digitally in the beginning. Before this, Naandi carried out a baseline study.

The results were not very heartening.

The 8th and 9th standard kids were at levels 3 and 5 standard of spoken English (which would have been normal had they not gone through years of Bhavishya Yaan).

Since then, they have had a few physical sessions and found that the best way to approach the mandate would be through theatrical intervention.

In the few sessions they have had they are getting ready to put up a performance for us And, the kids have written their own scripts!

This is going to be fun to watch and a wonderful way to determine what we do next.