By Sumita Jayaraman
As we start this new year, ILP is moving into its accelerated mode after the last 3 years of disruptions. At this time, it behooves us to take stock of all the work in the past year and celebrate our achievements.
Our greatest achievement was the scaling of our projects, our reach crossing 2.1 million children spanning all of our programs.
Here are some of details for each of our programs:
Our 1000+ Village learning centers that were launched during the pandemic as schools closed, continue to remain active across many states helping to narrow the learning losses and provide support even after schools re-opened. Given that over 77% of the VidyaSaathis are women, they also lead to village level empowerment.
The science kits developed by ILP have continued to be rolled out, touching more than 300,000 children across 2500+ schools. More importantly, children have been able to experience “hands on” learning leading to amazing science projects.
ILP also rolled out 420 new libraries as reading is a fundamental skill for all areas of learning.
Another unique ILP program, Career Guidance, has also been remarkably successful across 2500 schools. Over 4000 teachers have been trained to make this program self-sustaining. An interesting aside is that we have 10,000 students using our WhatsApp based chatbot (did you even know we had one?) to get their queries addressed. This was especially useful during COVID school closures.
Our newest initiative focused on building the future workforce rolled out computer education and training, however in the local language. The self-learning videos have found their way to 1200 schools and 6000+ teachers.
All this work has increased the reputation of ILP as a results-driven organization and we have had over 20 different Indian CSR organizations that have partnered with us. From Dell to Microsoft and Rotary to United Way, we have many knowledge and funding partners in our sphere of collaboration. The last one being the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation supporting a new project in Karnataka. This impressive performance has motivated us to set ambitious goals for 2023 to reach 3 million students and we hope this will galvanize you, all of our supporters, to help us get there.
On the US end of things, ILP did organize a virtual relay as part of our fundraising efforts. Enthusiastic volunteers and groups clocked in as high as 120 miles in 2 months! In 2023 as the Golden Gate Relay is back we hope to see you all there
Towards the end of the year, we were able to revive our in-person, invite only, annual fundraising dinner. After a 2 year gap of virtual events, everyone was thrilled to be in the same room face-to-face with wonderful food and entertainment. It was a joyful reunion of our supporters and volunteers.
Finally, an important update about our National team is that ILP welcomed its new National Convener. After handling the role for the past 3 years, I have the pleasure to report that Raj from our National team will be taking over this role. Raj’s experience and close relationship with ILP for many years will help us get to the next level of expansion and governance.
Look out for all the new events in this year and thank you for your support.