Involve Peer Teaching Program

I am a graduate from IIT Madras and a serial entrepreneur focused on solving complex social problems through "First Principle Thinking". 

I am passionate about developing future leaders for which I founded Involve, during my sophomore years, an international award-winning social enterprise that aspires to create student-driven learning in schools via Peer Teaching. I currently lead a team of 10 passionate people who have worked with 5000+ students in the last 3 years making them future-ready.  

I also co-founded Alcheme Robotics, a spinoff from my college project that develops robots for Septic Tank & sewer cleaning. It aims at eliminating Manual scavenging. 
I was on the advisory board of Nirmaan, IIT Madras's pre-incubation cell and mentored many student startups. I have received an award from Prime Minister Narendra Modi and was also featured in CNBC Young Turks. I was recognized as top 16 young entrepreneurs globally by Singapore International Foundation.

Learning has stopped for over 320 million students in India due to the current crisis. It has added to the existing challenges which had already paralysed students’ learning. While on surface, e-learning proposes to be a viable alternative, only ~14% of students we work with can access high-speed Internet in their homes to pursue live classes. At the same time, teachers aren't equipped to handle and take care of all the students remotely. 

We are proposing a scalable & impactful online Peer teaching model where senior grade students will teach junior grade students (5 member group) using low tech tools like Whatsapp or telephone calls & our curated content. While it will ensure continuity of education (academic and life skills) for the kids, it will also make students self-directed & empower them to take care of each other's well being.

Learning is affected for almost 800 million students globally with 320 million belonging to India alone because of Covid. While there are people who believe that everything will get back to normal in couple months, we realise that this will take time and education can't wait. School will remain closed for a foreseeable future. With the uncertainty of the crisis, students would drop out of education & go back to working, thereby reversing years of progress that we have made in ensuring their right to education. We must also understand that kids have been along at home, thereby increasing their stress and anxiety level. We need to think about humanising online leaning, making it more personalised and collaborative. 

Our project is about leveraging the power of students to help their fellow students using Peer Teaching and learning. Involve has been a pioneer in using Peer driven learning to benefit thousands of students in India and empowering them to take ownership of their learning. While our program had been offline, we saw COVID as an opportunity to connect and engage in a collaborative learning manner. There are 3 parts of the solution:

1. Pedagogy & Content: The project relies on the pedagogy of Peer teaching-learning with content curated by experts at Involve. We have two student groups: Peer-Teachers (who teach) and Learners (who learn). Each Peer-Teacher is paired with 4 Learner and are given a curated lesson plan to teach and learn to strengthen numeracy and literacy.

2. Student Relationships: Ensuring that students are reached out to and brought on the platform. This will be made possible via partnerships with local educational organisations.

3. Technology as an Enabler: Initially the database will be managed by us with whatsapp/calls as a teaching medium, however, once we have more students with us, we have a roadmap to create a tech platform that will manage the allocation, grouping and monitoring of students. 

The community that we work are at the bottom of pyramid (earning ~$7 a day) where none of the families can afford private education and the students attend public schools. Their earnings have gotten affected because of COVID. We have been working with 500+ kids from these families since the last 3 months addressing their educational needs and well-being. Initially our support was build to provide them with immediate needs (food, etc) and then we started focusing on our core work, education. 

Each of the solutions that we have designed so far have emerged in conversations with the communities and what is possible for them. We initially started with a whatsapp based program what taught real life concept to kids using a flipped classroom model, and later piloted to online peer teaching to ensure better learning. 

Less than 20% of the kids in India are able to participate in online live classrooms because of lack of contextual solutions. Through our program, we want to reach out to even the students without access to internet (through telephone based peer teaching) thereby truly reaching out to students which are left behind. 

The work and the pedagogy of Involve has been there since 3 years now. However, the online work started 3 months back when almost all our work stopped because of the pandemic and we couldn't reach out to our students because of schools being closed. 

Initially started as a check-in call to ensure our students well-being, this turned into a proper learning program run on whatsapp managed by our team. The project was innovated and implemented by our leadership team at Involve (samyak & Asha) We have been able to reach out to 1000+ kids so far and are planning to impact 50000 students within the next 6 months through our scalable model of online Peer teaching. 

Our Online peer teaching pilot got over last week where we tested the feasibility with over 100 kids online to understand the end to end process of this program, challenges and needs. 

I belong to a low-income family in Bihar, the state among the lowest 5 literacy rate in India. All my life I have struggled to get good education and it was only because of an opportunity in my high school, my future course changed completely. I have seen first hand what it means to have a bad education and what change it can bring in your life if you get a good one. Similar is the case with my co-founder Samyak Jain who belongs from the same state. This is the same reason why I left a high paying job that I was offered at my graduation to continue working with Involve and improve the lives of the most affected kids.

We believe that this Covid is an unprecedented crisis that will force students to drop out of schools and go back into child labour and that is something that we as a society just can't afford! It will reverse the years of progress we have made in elevating the education of our country and we must do our best to ensure continuity of education for our kids. 

As mentioned earlier, Involve has pioneered the Peer Teaching program in India and is the first organisation ever to develop a structures and sustainable model around it, driven completely by students. 

With a strong R&D team advised by researchers and academicians around the world, we feel we can understand student behaviours and nudges strongly.

At the same time, our operations team has great understanding of working with over 5000+ kids. 

Just 3 months back, all our programs at Involve were offline with zero physical presence. All our team members were experienced to handle kids in a physical classroom and within just 3 months, we have shifted all our programs online, got in touch with more than 50% of the kids we were initially working with and helped them start learning online. 

We have been tirelessly working since the last 3 months, and have launched 3 programs, all contextual to the needs of the communities we work with, leveraging on our strengths despite all of us working remotely from home.  

Our organisation has been on the forefront of work. we have received numerous award for our community impact and here are some that demonstrate our leadership ability.
- Winner of Global Engagement Summit at Northwestern University Chicago, competing against 43 delegates from 19 countries: April 2017
- Got selected as Top 16, young social entrepreneurs globally by Singapore International Foundation: March 2018
- Got selected as Top 10 non profits in India by N/Core : May 2018
- Won the Chennai Pitch Fest by Department of State, USA: December 2018

Our co-founder Samyak Jain was selected as Top 30 fellows globally by The gratitude Network, in Silicon Valley: Oct 2019