LUCKNOW: Marico Limited has announced the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Government of Uttar Pradesh in order to launch a Teacher Empowerment Program under its flagship initiative – Nihar Shanti Paathshala Funwala.
Further to Marico’s commitment to enable children’s education and progress, this initiative will equip government school teachers with a unique teaching pedagogy and an innovative approach enabling them to teach English.
The MoU was signed by Priyanka Puri, responsible for heading Education CSR Initiatives at Marico Limited and Vijay Kiran Anand, IAS, Director General, School Education & Special Secretary, Basic Education, Government of Uttar Pradesh in the presence of dignitaries including Shrimati Anandiben Patel, Governor of Uttar Pradesh and Dr. Satish Chandra Dwivedi, Hon’ble Minister of State, Basic Education, Government of Uttar Pradesh, during the National Education CSR Conclave held in Lucknow.
Through this program, Nihar Shanti Paathshala Funwala endeavours to provide teachers with a support system that enables English proficiency in reading, writing and comprehension in school students. With an aim to reach 8,00,000 children, the program will train more than 25,000 school teachers in the state, using a highly structured, modular and measurable product developed by Marico’s NGO partner LeapForWord – The English Literacy Program – which can be delivered in regional languages.
The program is offered free of cost and will provide high quality digital training material to strengthen the school teachers’ capacity. This is enhancing the usability of the current curriculum and will act as a catalyst in improving ASER and NAS scores.
With an aim to bridge the academic gaps and help in grade appropriateness in English for students as well as create a scalable and sustainable model that benefits the whole state, the first phase of the initiative will be implemented in across 8 districts (Chaunduli, Ghazipur, Jaunpur, Varanasi, Prayagraj, Fatehpur, Kaushambi and Pratapgarh) in Uttar Pradesh. In the subsequent phases, it will be expanded to all 18 administrative zones covering 75 districts by 2023.
Speaking about the initiative, Udayraj Prabhu, Executive Vice President – Business Process Transformation & IT at Marico Limited, says, “Marico Limited’s Nihar Shanti Paathshala Funwala has always championed the cause of children’s education and progress.
This association with Government of Uttar Pradesh is in line with our commitment to provide quality education across India and positively impact the learning outcomes. Through this partnership, we intend to complement the Education Department’s efforts and fit seamlessly in the state government’s structure of dissemination education by empowering teachers with a unique teaching pedagogy. On the back of this Teacher Empowerment Program, we aim to benefit 2 million students by 2023.”
Over the last seven years, Nihar Shanti Amla has remained true to its purpose of providing underprivileged children with opportunities and access to education, contributing 5% of its profits towards the same. To further its cause of supporting children’s education, the brand launched the Nihar Shanti Paathshala Funwala, which helps children learn spoken English anytime, anywhere free of cost. The initiative has led massive rural outreach programmes that have positively impacted 7500+ villages with more than 10 lakh calls received on the toll free number from 3 lakh children in these villages in the past year.
