Aavishkaar

About the organization

Vision: To nurture curious, creative, and critical-thinking citizens of tomorrow. We encourage children to question to understand the world around them. Curiosity and interest often lead to the creation of new ideas. We want students to never stop exploring and not be afraid to make mistakes. We encourage children to be observant and justify their opinions with evidence. 

Mission: Aavishkaar’s mission is to enable, equip, and empower educators and students to rekindle their creativity, curiosity, and critical thinking in science and math. We endeavor to make science and math experiential, engaging, immersive, and accessible to all. Our core belief is that evidence-backed content that is rigorous and relevant can fundamentally transform the classroom experience for the child. 

Strategy: Aavishkaar works with educators, teachers, and students to re-imagine and transform how science and math are taught in schools through a fellowship program for young leaders passionate about bringing change in Government schools. Experiential capacity-building programs for educators and teachers through workshops. Residential camps for students to stimulate curiosity, creativity, and critical thinking in science and math. We adopt various pedagogic strategies & develop content at our campus to achieve this mission.

Location of work

We have a physical presence in Himachal Pradesh. Our online assistance and interventions include Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, Bihar, Gujarat, Assam, Himachal Pradesh, and Delhi. Short in-person workshops are also conducted in these locations.

Project updates

As part of our Drishticone Program, we strengthen math and science education in Himachal Pradesh through teacher and student engagement with visual, contextual, relevant, and engaging content. This is accomplished through (a) navigating through education departments at block, district, and state levels, (b) weekly sessions with students at school, (c) online teacher development and support workshops at the district level, and (d) math and science festivals in state/district/block schools. Location: Himachal Pradesh

Learning

• Long-term effort requires that we nurture relationships with allies at the grassroots level.
• Deeper in-person engagement with students ensures greater results.
• A hybrid model using both online and offline modalities is more effective in teachers’ training.

Challenges 

• The number of hours of engagement across the state, with teachers and students is limited. 
• Invariably, we get to work with teachers on the content, but we are not being able to visit their classrooms and see their implementation.

Future plans

• We have been with DIETs and BRCs for several years now, we would like to become a technical partner with the state in math and science. 
• We have gained a deep understanding and created various concepts of math and science from the foundation to the high school level, we aim to offer modular training support as per the need. 
• Our Idea of Ganit and Vigyaan charchas have been acknowledged for their effectiveness, so we want to make these charchas available for everyone through our online platform. 
• Working with pre-service teachers of the DL.El.Ed. (Diploma in Elementary Education) program.
• New Module research and content creation and implementation with team, teachers, and students. 
• Capacity building of team in existing and new modules.
• Have a strong and effective assessment plan for the participants of our workshops.
• Evolve an effective monitoring and evaluation process. 
• Increase the engagement with government teachers of Himachal in the 7 remaining districts through a year-long program. 
• Start working with Pre-service teachers, especially in DL.El.Ed. 
• Setting up structures within the team and organization with clear roles and responsibilities. 
• Hiring good talent to strengthen the team. 
• Enrolling more Aavishkaar fellows & Aarohan fellows for upcoming cohorts.
• Devoting 10 hours of training for each team member for a year.

In the coming future, we will be looking for active assistance to develop our capacities in monitoring and evaluation, human resource management, organizational branding, fundraising, and organizational development.