CSR: Bangalore Corporates Step up to Ready Karnataka Govt. Schools and Students for their Return

The ongoing Covid-19 crisis and the ensuing lockdowns, leading to the closure of schools, had adverse impacts on the educational, health and nutritional journeys of Government School students. As Government Schools prepare to welcome students back, with many not having been in their classrooms since March 2020, Embassy Group, its corporate and NGO partners have joined hands to ensure the health and safety of their adopted schools.    

Embassy’s flagship Corporate Connect Program aims to bring together Business Park tenants with aligned Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) mandates and experienced non-profits to collectively address and solve a diverse number of challenges faced in Government Schools. 

Embassy and their corporate partner in health, Cerner Charitable Foundation, have been providing a targeted health program in Government Schools since 2016. Aimed at tackling the full gamut of problems – from preventive to detective – the program has strengthened during the Covid-19 pandemic to encompass over 45,000 students in Karnataka, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh and Tamil Nadu. With the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, the partners turned their focus to the distribution of health kits, preventive awareness and top-to-bottom school maintenance.

To safeguard against the virus, as well as bolsters each student’s general hygiene, Embassy and Cerner Charitable Foundation has provided preventive health kits, reaching 3,771 students across 14 Government Schools over the last two weeks. Each kit contains bath soaps, re-usable masks, shampoo, a toothbrush, toothpaste, a tongue cleaner, a nail cutter, nutrition bars and N-95 masks for their parents. 1,795 girl students also received menstrual pads. With Covid-19 posing an enormous threat to ongoing health challenges, including malnutrition, it became imperative to counter these increasing incidences among underprivileged children. To assist in combating this, booklets containing nutritional awareness were also handed out.

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The Group already maintains 17 Government Schools daily with the aim of creating campuses conducive to learning. In addition to the daily maintenance that continued throughout the pandemic across all adopted schools, Embassy conducted deep cleaning and sanitization of the Government High Schools as well. These steps ensure that students were welcomed back with safe, well-maintained, and hygienic infrastructure. Each school has also been furnished with enough sanitizer for daily use, along with sanitizer stands. 

As schools re-open, students will be dependent on teachers to ensure that their learning continues in a nourishing environment, making up for the knowledge lost while they were away. To mitigate any teachers contracting the virus, Embassy also handed out face shields and masks to 148 teachers across their adopted Government Schools. This is in addition to the face shields provided for 59,887 teachers and temperature monitors for 9,347 Government High and Primary School across Karnataka, by the Embassy and a consortium of their corporate partners.

On these initiatives, Mrs. Shabhana Akthar, Assistant Teacher, Government Urdu Model Primary School, Hegdenagar, said, “With schools opening soon, we had to keep the safety of our students and teachers in mind. We are grateful to Embassy and Cerner Charitable Foundation for providing us with the necessary equipment, including sanitizers, masks and face shields, to safeguard them and prevent any further spread of the Covid-19 virus. Embassy has been nurturing our schools over the years, including maintaining them on a daily basis with their expert facilities team – they have stepped up during the pandemic to support our students during this incredibly challenging time.”

Embassy Group had partnered with the Department of Education previously to support students across the state with their SSLC examinations. For two years in a row, they had augmented the Department’s endeavor to guarantee safe examinations by providing sufficient sanitizers for every day of the testing, benefitting over 9.6 lakh students and invigilators. The Group had partnered with the Department of State Educational Research and Training (DSERT) to donate recording studio equipment and fit-outs that provide much-needed learning opportunities for Government School students during the Covid-19 pandemic and beyond. The initiative aimed at supplementing the existing online teaching programs and teacher development undertaken by the Department of Education by offering a permanent solution.