Life Skills for Girls

Ignis Careers has developed a Life Skills program for adolescent girls that integrates functional English language learning and basic life skills along with awareness about general health, continuing education, career opportunities and personal rights. The life skills component is based on the core life skills recommended by WHO -- Self-awareness, Empathy, Critical thinking, Creative thinking, Decision making, Problem Solving, Effective communication, Interpersonal relationship, Coping with change, aggression, conflict, etc. 

The curriculum is designed to be delivered through after-school or in-school or camp based training at schools (regular and residential), girls’ welfare hostels, shelter homes etc. The initiative empowers girls with information on personal safety and security, and the skills to negotiate skewed gender dynamics and inculcates Life Skills; English Skills; Gender Justice and Empowerment; Nutrition, Health and Hygiene with focus on infections; Reproductive Health; Education and Careers Awareness; Financial Independence; Citizenship and Rights Awareness; and Legal Remedies and Entitlements.

India is a nation that is characterized by social inequalities. Access to various social benefits like quality education, nutrition, health care, are often dictated by factors such economic status, social class, caste and gender. The effects of the established social structures have been particularly biased against the most vulnerable members of the community - women and children. The adverse effects of this lack of concern is particularly felt by the younger segment. Women, particularly the girl child have been traditionally sidelined in the socioeconomic milieu.

A primary issue that needs to be addressed is the limited access to quality education and an emancipatory curriculum to enable girls to take charge of and chalk out their own destiny. While the state has established schools for vulnerable communities that deliver a standard curriculum, there are lacunae in providing actual life skills and awareness of socio-economic empowerment; nutrition, health and hygiene; reproductive health; education and career awareness; financial independence; legal remedies and entitlements. In many cases women end up suffering as they are unable to access the emancipatory schemes available to them

Ignis Careers has developed a six month participatory learning program for Life Skills for girls and young women. The curriculum has been carefully designed around the following principles:

• Carefully chosen contexts from lived experience of the students
• Need centered and culturally relevant learning
• Age appropriate curriculum based on developmental milestones
• Gender awareness, health and rights component integrated into the curriculum
• Improved learning skills and awareness of STEM
• Enhanced confidence 
• Setting a culture of participatory and purposeful education in schools from the grassroots

The program can be delivered using two mechanisms:

• Existing Teachers: The existing teachers at the school can be trained in participatory activity based pedagogy to deliver the curriculum at the schools. This will involve short-term intensive training sessions to familiarize them with the curriculum and teaching methodologies. This will be supported by weekly/fortnightly monitoring and hand-holding sessions.
• Teacher Fellow Model: Primarily developed for community centers and government schools, this model identifies qualified, yet unemployed change agents in the community who will be trained to deliver the curriculum. These Teacher Fellows will then be attached to a school or community center to deliver the curriculum. There will be a mentoring, training and monitoring protocol to ensure effective implementation.

The primary beneficiaries will be girls and young women from vulnerable communities in rural and urban areas. Some of the social impact goals that it tries to achieve are as follows

• Economic Growth: Girl child education has shown to result in a rise of 30 percentage point increase in female economic participation. .
• Community Benefits: An educated woman with increased earning potential is more likely to give back to the community than her male counterparts. 
• Decreased Chance of Abuse by Delaying Marriage and Child Bearing: Educated women are much less likely to suffer domestic abuse.  
• Decreased Child and Mother Mortality Rates: Educated women are more knowledgeable about children’s nutrition, proper sanitation practices and medical care.
• Inter-generational Success: Children of educated mothers are more likely to attend school and pursue higher education than their peers with uneducated mothers.
• Social Inclusion: Education encourages women to develop a professional life, allowing them to become part of the community and chalk their future on their terms.
• Better Health: Children whose mothers are educated are twice as likely to get better hygiene and nutrition inputs, and receive vaccinations against major disease, promoting better health outcomes for the entire community.

The program is designed to empower girls with the information and skills required to ensure personal safety and security, negotiate skewed gender dynamics and inculcates Life Skills; STEM awareness; social confidence, gender justice and empowerment; nutrition, health and hygiene, particularly to ensure safety in times of geographic disasters and pandemic situations; reproductive  and natal health; education and career awareness; financial awareness and independence; citizenship and rights Awareness; and legal remedies and entitlements.

The program is designed to develop meta skills that will help the beneficiaries navigate current challenges and seek solutions to propblems they may face.

Existing programs primarily focus on instruction in “spoken English” or particular subjects usually on a digital AV platform. Most of these programs require access to digital and network infrastructure not easily available to learners or even schools in under-served communities. Apart from these, most of the teachers in these schools do not have the skills to provide support to the students.

The Ignis curriculum is based on the understanding that the key to better learning skills and individual growth is to enhance life skills and to efficiently appropriate English language as a potent tool for empowerment and social development. The focus of the program is to develop the language skills of the students in an interactive and joyful manner where language acquisition becomes a part of the lived experience rather than theoretical learning (grammar) as a subject. The curriculum integrates age and culturally appropriate Life Skills instruction, STEM awareness and draws from concepts from other subjects in the school curriculum. These are designed to be delivered through participatory, interactive methodologies that are designed to develop the learners' metalearning and critical thinking skills. The teachers and students participate in a series of joyful learning activities based on various forms of creative expressions, like drama, songs, movement and public speaking reflecting the learners’ lived experiences.

Ignis is currently developing an interactive app for teachers and learners designed to be deployed on mobile and PC platforms. The features of the app are as follows:

Students' Interface

• Assess Students' Levels: The app will be designed to monitor user's activities, response time and their interaction with the interface to assess their learning  levels.
• Evolution of Content: Based on the student's activity and learning patterns, the app will customize and program the content to suit the needs of the learner.
• Interactive and Purposeful Content: The content will be developed on using interactive, participatory  learning methodologies to enable the students to learn in a joyful  atmosphere while achieving the desired learning outcomes.
• Teacher-Student Interface: Limited social media access and elementary fin-tech, digital literacy in terms of real-life transactions like govt applciations, college applications etc.

Teacher Assistant Interface

• Lesson Plans: Easy to follow instructions with illustrations and voice-overs, equipping under-skilled teachers to improve their facilitation. It also provides teachers with a continuous learning program.
• Monitor Student's Performance: The app would monitor the student's performance taking into account the key parameters of assessment such as, response rate, reading, writing skills, creative ability, and extent of understanding and areas of growth
• Assessments: Based on various statics generated from the student's usage metrics, the app will generate assessments to gauge the student's learning levels for desired learning outcomes.
• Student Profiles: Pre and post assessments for students would be available for teachers along with real-time progress of the students.

Interactive digital apps have been used to complement chalk and board pedagogy for nearly a decade. Hitherto, used primarily by more elite schools in the urban milieu, since the recent pandemic, there are more and more schools catering to poorer communities trying to adopt the technology to their needs.

The foundation was already established by all state governments in India through policy papers and schemes to introduce digital AV technology for pedagogy in government schools. However, there has been a reluctance in adoption.

However, in the current milieu, there may be necessity in adopting this. It will require the training of the teachers in the use of this technology and orientation of students and their guardians in effective use, necessity and advantages of adopting it not necessarily as the sole teaching method, but atleast as an complementary pedagogic tool.

Ignis strives to empower learners from deprived communities gain access to wider academic and career opportunities through a culturally relevant and age/level appropriate curriculum with special focus on reading, writing and speaking skills integrated with life skills for purposeful learning, thereby providing an opportunity to break the cycle of poverty.

Ignis has developed an integrated age appropriate and culturally relevant English language and life skills curriculum to empower school students belonging to under-served and deprived communities. We work with the schools to provide year-long training for their teachers in delivering the curriculum through innovative activity-based participatory teaching methodologies. The improved content delivery by teachers translate to better student performance and improved learning.

The program is defined by the following features:

• Participatory, activity based Life Skills program for girls
• 150 hrs of curriculum delivered over one year
• Carefully chosen contexts from the lived experience of the students
• Need centered learning and culturally relevant syllabus
• Age appropriate curriculum based on developmental milestones
• Gender awareness, health and rights, STEM awareness, meta-learning, critical thinking and problem solving skills integrated into the curriculum
• Setting a culture of participatory and purposeful education in schools from the grassroots 

 All of Ignis’s engagements are based on our Theory of Change

• Ujawala Program for Girls: Ignis Careers developed a 3-level life skill based curriculum to empower girl children program appropriate for the age groups between 13 and 18. This program integrates English language learning and basic life skills along with awareness about general and reproductive health, educational opportunities, career awareness, personal rights awareness etc. The initiative empowers girls with information on personal safety, security issues and career guidance also also skills to negotiate skewed gender dynamics. The curriculum also draws from STEM subjects to help the learners enhance their logical, critical thinking and problem solving skills. It is an interactive program to empower girls and young women belonging to vulnerable communities in urban and rural areas. It was piloted as a summer camp in 31 government schools for 700 adolescent girl children in Hyderabad.

Since its inception in 2014, Ignis Careers has impacted over 10,000 teachers and 250,000 underserved children across Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Odisha, and New Delhi through a wide range of customised learning programs. Its engagements are guided by the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that emphasise the importance of all
children and young people receiving a purposeful basic education by 2030. Over the years, through their flagship program Rural Teacher Fellowship program, we have designed and delivered a culturally relevant age and level
appropriate context based curriculum in sixteen villages in Khammam district, Telangana, five schools in Hyderabad, Telangana and three schools in Aya Nagar, New Delhi. 

Onaverage we serve approximately 50,000 students in about 140 schools  each year. Over the next five years, we hope to reach 300,000 students annually in 1000 schools. We hope to have helped a cumulative total of 1.5 million learners largely from under-served communities across India.

• We are currently developing technology based solutions to complement our direct outreach and enhance our curriculum delivery methods.
• We intend to establish a separate division to serve schools in rural areas that cater to low-income communities through the Rural Teacher Fellow program by accessing funds from CSR organizations.
• Enhance the life skills for girls curriculum with greater focus on STEM and health care and nutrition education. 
• We also wish to develop and establish a CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) based curriculum to provide a more focused and integrated learning experience.
• Establish more branches across India to reach more students, particularly in underdeveloped regions.

• Accessing funds for expansion
• Disruptions due to pandemics and other natural disasters particularly affecting the poorer, more vulnerable communities.
• Lack of access to technologies mainly due to poverty in many rural and peri-urban regions.
• Social resistance to gender equity and bias against girls

Direct interaction and counselling and more effective outreach to communities and organizations.

Full time staff: 32

Part-time staff (Teacher Fellows): 8

We are a social enterprise that promotes purposeful education through an integrated English Language and Life Skills curriculum and trains teachers in its delivery using activity based, participatory teaching methodologies. We partner with schools and local administrations in under- served communities to develop capacity building programmes for an enriching and creative learning environment. We partner with affordable schools, Government schools colleges, CSR entities, and NGOs in the state of Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Delhi, NCR and Odisha.

In 2010 the Teacher Fellowship model for the delivery of a complementary English and Life Skills program was begun in the zilla parishad primary and high schools in Banapuram village at Khammam district. In three years the program had resulted in reducing dropouts, increased enrolment at the school, greater gender parity in enrolment, better overall academic results and higher number of graduates moving on to higher studies. The success goaded the authorities and encouraged CSR funds to replicate the model in the primary and high schools in more villages. The program is currently being implemented in schools in 17 villages in Khammam district. Other funders have also comeforward to partner with Ignis to implement the program in three schools in Delhi and five schools in Hyderabad.

We have partnered with

HT Parikh Foundation: Delivering the English and Life Skills curriculum through a Rural Teacher Fellows model to government schools in 16 villages in Khammam District, Telangana

United Way of Delhi: Delivering the English and Life Skills curriculum through a Rural Teacher Fellows model to three government schools in Aya Nagar, New Delhi

United Way of Hyderabad: Delivering the English and Life Skills curriculum through a Rural Teacher Fellows model to five government schools in Hyderabad, Telangana

Deshpande Foundation:  Training of Teacher Fellows in the delivery of the Ignis English and Life Skills program for government schools in Karnataka. Also provided support in developing Teacher Manuals for the regular English curriculum at these schools.

Our primary revenue source is through the setting up of English and Life Skills Labs in affordable private schools in urban, semi-urban and rural regions. These schools work in areas were government interventions have fallen short and cater to the lower middle class, and poorer sections of society.

The English Language and Life Skills Lab (ELSL) is a comprehensive English language school support package that aids in the process of language learning through application and participatory learning methods.

In addition to this, ELSL also contributes to the overall educational development of the learner by integrating crucial life skills modules   within the programme. This year-long programme seeks to create a culture of purposeful and joyful learning in schools. The primary features of the service are:

• 8 levels of engagement from K–10.
• Age-appropriate content to the levels of English skills of the target students.
• Socially relevant curriculum.
• 120 - 150 hours of participatory and reflective learning through a series of activities.
• Cost Effective (average cost per child per year is approximately INR 750/-)
• Continual training support for teachers in the delivery of the program including mentoring and hand-holding.

Ignis is a social enterprise that provides affordable solutions to low income schools. For as less that USD 10 per child per year, Ignis Careers offers a curriculum in English and Life Skills and trains the teachers in its delivery through participatory activity based teaching methodology. The teachers are encouraged to use similar methodologies while teaching the regular subjects at their school.

We also access CSR funds to deliver the program to government schools in rural areas through a Rural Teacher Fellow model that recruits and trains qualified local residents and attach them to the schools.

We provide short-term functional English programs for corporations, colleges and other institutions.

We offer curriculum development consulting for organisations working in the area of education and training.

We would like to benefit from the decade of research by the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence and become a knowledge partner.

Develop technology partnerships for app development and seek out more avenues for harnessing media and communication innovations for education in a cost-effective manner.

Gain access to investors and donors for expansion.

Explore opportunities for partnerships with other international organizations working in the field of education for vulnerable communities.

We would like to expand our service model to reach out to more vulnerable communities across the world. We also hope to harness technological innovations in media and communications for more effective pedagogy designed for specific communities in India and abroad.

We would like to partner with organizations, institutions and groups keen on developing effective teaching/learning strategies that will provide a more level playing field for those from deprived or vulnerable communities with limited access to quality education. The partnerships can include knowledge sharing, research and implementation.

We would like to explore the possibilities of educational engagement among refugee communities in India and its neighbors or even in other developing countries in Africa, and other parts of Asia.

We hope to develop a curriculum and delivery strategy that can be either technology based, traditional or a combination of both that can be easily accessed and used sustainably by these communities.

Development of a gender based curriculum that focuses on empowerment of girls and women from vulnerable communities. This will be specifically useful in communities with strong patriarchal structures to empower women with a more level playing field in education and provide them with the ability for independence and to fight for social equity.

Development of a gender based curriculum that focuses on empowerment of girls and women from vulnerable communities. This will be specifically useful in communities with strong patriarchal structures to empower women with a more level playing field in education and provide them with the ability for independence and to fight for social equity.