Hamari Pahchan NGO, based in Delhi and directed by international chess player Tarun Mathur (Founder) and his wife Mrs Anjli Mathur (President), has developed a new measure of teaching and learning for the underprivileged children.
Tarun Mathur founded Hamari Pahchan In 2014 and got it registered in 2015. Since the very beginning, he has had a different vision of social work. He has a concept of ‘Help each Other’ and ‘creating someone’s own identity (Creating an own ‘Pahchan’).
Similarly, he has a different vision of providing resources and education to underprivileged children. He wants to bridge/cover the gap between a public school student and a government school student.
He stated that, “There is a clear difference between how a public school student behaves to that of how a government school student. This difference is majorly created because of a lack of resources and the method through which teaching is provided to them”.
Bridging The Educational Gap
To bridge the gap, he step forward and established ‘classes for underprivileged students residing in slum areas and named them ‘Drishti Classes’.
Under Drishti Classes, he provides students with informal education classes, which are held weekly and are based on crucial topics for the development of child psyche and behavioural aspects.
Concepts of hygiene, kindness, nature, etc are undertaken through projectors, presentations, interactive sessions, English speaking, public dealing/speaking, games, and various innovative strategies designed to engage and simultaneously inform children.
Access to basic education and awareness about oneself as well as society is every child’s fundamental right. Tarun, under this project, wishes to sustain and widen the prospect of this belief.
Bridging The Digital Gap
Even in lockdown, with a sudden closure of schools and everything being shifted online underprivileged students were facing problems in attending online classes, they were lacking the resources and medium to attend the online classes.
Tarun Mathur understood the concern and come up with the idea of mobile (Moving Gadgetshala). Through the means of “GADGETSHALA”, he intends to shift to a mode of online learning, accessible through gadgets such as mobile phones, tablets, and laptops.
With the same means, Hamari Pahchan is trying to provide today’s youth with basic training in computers. This has a dual aim, primarily providing opportunities to unemployed yet educated youth as a mentor for these children.
They will provide them with financial security which will also increase skill development as well as training Courses that the volunteers can take up. Secondly making children technology-friendly from the very beginning.
Bridging The Tech Knowledge Gap
Furthermore, Hamari Pahchan has distributed textbooks, notebooks, and other stationery essentials, doing its best to ensure all have accessibility to elementary levels of education. They have a plan to move towards an online accessible environment.
In this process, we want those children to be technologically compatible. Providing them with the knowledge of all the data functioning like how to use MS office for their daily work. Hamari Pahchan hopes to make regions Wi-Fi-enabled so that students may take advantage of it.
They also aim to run mobile vans with gadgets that will be available in various locations to assist students in learning and becoming well-versed in the newest technologies to accomplish in their lives.
With his critical thinking, he establishes a wonderful way to connect public and government school students.
Helping Each Other
He came up with an internship program known as ‘help each other’, in which he provides public school students with an opportunity of doing community service while sitting at home by recording educational lectures and displaying the same to underprivileged students under the gadgetshala initiative.
The NGO has provided benefits to more than 15,000+ students under their Drishti project since 2014 and conducted classes under the gadgetshala initiative for more than 100+ students.
Not only this, he has collaborated with more than 50 schools of Delhi NCR for his internship program ‘help each other’ and it provided a community service experience to more than 1000+ school students.