International Women’s Day: Meet Khushboo Awasthi, a key face in ‘mission’ to transform India’s 1 million govt schools

International Women’s Day: The public training system of India can’t be fastened in a single day however wants small, incremental modifications to obtain tangible objectives, says Khushboo Awasthi, the co-founder and Chief Operating Officer of ShikshaLokam, a non-profit engaged on the training management improvement mission.

ShikshaLokam works with the Department of School Education in totally different states and Union authorities establishments in the direction of designing faculty enchancment and management improvement programmes.

Khushboo can be the co-founder of Mantra4Change, a non-profit driving systemic public schools transformation in the Indian training system. She is a member of the working committee of the National Mentoring Mission constituted by the National Council for Teacher Education.

In dialog with Mint on International Women’s Day, Khusboo, with over 15+ years of expertise in the training sector, Khusboo spoke about how a ‘public movement’ bringing collectively totally different stakeholders is looking for to transform India’s one million public schools.

Mint caught up with Khusboo on the sidelines of InvokED 4.0, a training management dialogue, organised by ShikshaLokam in Bengaluru on March 7-8. Here are the edited excerpts from the interview:

How did the concept of SikshaLokam come to you?

I’m an engineer from Bihar. While working at Wipro and Honeywell a few years in the past, I realised that no matter I may do was due to my training. I after which my pal and now husband (Santosh) realised that we should always do one thing for training. So, in 2013, we began Mantra4Change, a non-profit driving systemic public schools transformation in the Indian training system. The entire concept is how to be certain that children from marginalised sections of society get a good training.

Then in 2017, we began working with the federal government. We considered increasing our work into a motion throughout 1 million public schools of the nation. We began ShikshaLokam – a non-profit engaged on the training management improvement mission. The concept was to present a widespread expertise platform with ministry of training by way of a programme known as Diksha – the ‘national digital infrastructure for teachers.’

You talk about Shikshagraha. Tell us about it?

While working with totally different companions with totally different contextual information, we thought-about fixing the issue by growing an ecosystem. At current we’re working with about 150 organisations in 20 states related to ShikshaLokam. And final 12 months, we determined to launch what we name a public motion – ‘Shikshagraha’. We thought once we can have a Satyagraha for freedom motion why not a Shikshagraha for a motion in training.

‘Shikshagraha’ is not simply a platform. It just isn’t a registered organisation. It is a collective of organisation that seeks to present a thriving surroundings for co-creation of need-based options to develop into a actuality. 

Any organisation can work with this collective. The distinctive side is that earlier we used to work with simply authorities organisations. But at the moment there are small grassroots organisations like self assist teams who’ve joined us.

How does Shikshagraha work?

It’s like a ladder in which you are taking one step at a time. Each organisation is exclusive and works in its personal approach. If I have been ShikshaLokam, my workforce would work with the federal government in Delhi (Centre). Mantra4Change and Piramal Foundation work in states on issues like programme designing in Rajasthan, for instance.

Our intention to faucet the strengths of various organizations and officers working in totally different areas of the nation. Today, we’re working in 20 states together with Meghalaya, Nagaland, Jammu and Kashmir, and so on. There are locations the place we discovered a authorities official in training division is proactive after which there are locations the place a accomplice group is doing a good job. A accomplice like EduView works on early childhood. Then finally, we discover funders who’re prepared to collaborate for the collective that has labored.

Basically, we’re unlocking three issues – authorities partnerships, leveraging expertise and funding. Tribal districts of Odisha are getting funded from Axis Bank in Bombay.

How have issues modified on the bottom?

Ever since we began working with authorities the concept is to deliver change in micro steps. We will see modifications in a single day. The concept is to work by way of micro enhancements. Today if you happen to take a look at Diksha dashboard, there are about 10 lakh micro enhancements have been recorded from throughout 20 states. 

For instance, Xavier Chandra Kumar, a faculty chief, led the holistic transformation of Vallalar Government Higher Secondary School, Villupuram, Tamil Nadu. He helped deal with drawback of medicine in the college. If these micro enhancements improve, it means schools are enhancing.

Four years in the past, we realised that whereas we have been working, we’d like to deal with management. While we have been working with companions and authorities, we discovered there was no deal with management. We started ‘invokED’ in 2021 to discover if can we catalyse dialogue on management and significance of management. Today invokED has developed as a house the place international companions are coming and collaborating in change of concepts.

The authorities of India’s secretary of training (Sanjay Kumar), training secretaries from six states are right here for this two-day occasion. The concept is to see how all these stakeholders – authorities, NGO’s and philanthrophy organisations work collectively.