Isha Vidhya - Vision for Rural Schools

Our Vision

To provide high quality education to rural children who cannot otherwise access or afford it.

Our Mission

To nurture each child’s development beyond just academics through a holistic activity-based approach, ensuring that children realize their full potential and learn in a joyful manner

Unique Methodology for Rural Schools

Isha Vidhya teachers receive extensive, on-going training to enhance their capabilities. At the same time, the scalable methodology is designed to reduce the students’ dependence on the teachers for learning. Key features of the methodology include:

Multi-sensory, activity-based learning, which stimulates learning on multiple levels
Interactive, discussion-based classes, promoting analytical and critical thinking skills
English-medium instruction, emphasizing language fluency at a young age
Extensive libraries in print, audio, video and computer materials, enhancing the learning process
Digital classrooms, bringing the world into the village school

The Right Environment & Holistic Development

Isha Vidhya students are given relevant exposure and equipped with essential skills for the 21st century, without losing sight of the traditional wisdom and diversity of India. The school infrastructure includes spacious, well-lit classrooms and clean toilets, rarities in a village setting. To ensure overall development, the schools provide:

Nutritionally balanced noon meals, fortified with essential vitamins
Medical health check-ups
Sports activities and daily yoga practice
Environmental awareness through "Little Green Hands"

Scholarships

Since even nominal school fees are not affordable for a vast majority of rural children, Isha Vidhya provides deserving children a full scholarship for tuition, books and notebooks. In some cases, for children coming from extremely poor households, the already subsidized noon meals, transport by school bus and uniforms are also provided totally free. This enables the poorest of families to send their children to Isha Vidhya schools, giving them an opportunity to come out of the cycle of poverty.

Girl Students

Special efforts are taken to enroll girl children and encourage them to continue their studies during their adolescent years, which is when many girls tend to drop out of school. We also see how to actively support girl students in all our schools through preference in admission, scholarships and counseling of parents.

Volunteering

Volunteers play a critical role in Isha Vidhya's activities and programs. They are involved in fundraising, administrative support, creating awareness, celebrating key events, supporting the children's education, as well as conducting career guidance programs and social outreach programs.

The strong support from volunteers, both local and otherwise, goes a long way in keeping Isha Vidhya's operations cost-efficient while maintaining quality.

Alignment with Statutes

Isha Vidhya schools follow the State Board syllabus, which is augmented to enhance the quality and the joy of learning.

Isha Vidhya’s objectives, curriculum and methodologies imbibe the letter and spirit of the Right to Education Act 2009 by reaching out to children absent from school, reducing student/teacher ratios and providing access to clean facilities. They also align with the guiding principles of the National Curriculum Framework 2005, which focus on:

All-round development of the child instead of textbook-centric education
Building-up a child’s knowledge, potential and talent to the fullest
Learning through activities, discovery and exploration in a child-friendly manner
Creating an environment where children are free of fear, trauma and anxiety
Comprehensive, continuous evaluation of a child’s understanding and knowledge
Making examinations more flexible and integrated into classroom schedules
Connecting knowledge to the reality of students’ lives outside the school
Ensuring that rote methods of learning are avoided

Approach in Govt. School Support Program (carried out before Covid)

The learnings from running Isha Vidhya, which cater to an identical profile of students at government schools, had led to effective methodologies that helped government schools deal with some of their biggest issues. These include unmotivated teachers, large numbers of students lagging behind and poor English skills – all of which resulted in poor learning outcomes.

Isha Vidhya provided the following trainings and programs to tackle these issues:

Happy Classroom Workshop for Teachers: An interactive workshop that helped teachers stay self-motivated. It provided tools for child-centric teaching, motivational tools for maintaining discipline, and making learning interactive and participative. The workshop helped teachers focus on learning outcomes and evaluate a child's level of understanding on a continuous basis.
Remedial Program: Developed by Isha Vidhya to accelerate the learning outcomes of children who were considerably behind their levels and allowed them to get mainstreamed within a year or two.
Special English Program: A multi-sensory program that teaches language the natural way and greatly enhanced English speaking, reading and comprehension capabilities within 2 to 3 years.

OUR APPROACH