MIT Solve

Solution Overview

Solution Name

Sarva Foundation

One-line solution summary.

Sarva Foundation's mission is to make vocational music education and training accessible to talented youth, so that passions can flourish free of the level of privileges granted by destiny.

Elevator pitch

What is your solution?

Sarva provides online vocational music training and education. We offer online music lessons at lower than market rates to those who can afford to pay. The revenue collected is utilised for free of cost training and internationally recognised certification of under-served youth, who have the hunger to learn, but not the resources. This sets them on the path of socio-economic independence; once trained, they are able to become music instructors, teachers, performers, composers, music technicians. It also creates a positive and permanent impact on the learners as individuals and as members of their communities.

So far, we use freely available technology platforms, such as YouTube (for sharing instructional videos), Zoom (for conducting online classes, WhatsApp (for scheduling classes, evaluating performance and general communication), Squarespace (to host our website) and Stripe (to receive payments/donations). We hope to transform Sarva to an on-demand, global, technology-driven, collaborative social impact platform for vocational education and training and are in contact with Microsoft India to get their support in reaching our objective.

What specific problem are you trying to solve?

400 Million Indian children between the age groups 8-17 years are enrolled in the public school system (Source: https://censusindia.gov.in). The education they receive is completely ‘rote-learning based’ and does not prepare them at all for the real world. Since most of them don’t end up going to college anyway, it is imperative that they graduate high school with skills which will prepare them for jobs straight out of school. Unfortunately, this is not the case. As a result, these youth end up either unemployed or employed as manual/very low level workers, mostly in India’s unorganised industries. They are paid extremely low wages (as low as US$ 2/day) and exposed to exceedingly harsh (and often high risk) working conditions.

The socio-economic plight of these youth does not permit them to make a better future under their present circumstances, even with a secondary education degree. Sarva makes change happen; we create a huge impact in their lives as we train & certify them free of cost in the internationally recognised Rockschool (RSL, UK) music curriculum, thereby making them job ready as music professionals. This brings socio-economic upliftment for them, their families and their communities.

Sarva Foundation is our vehicle to fill the institutional void created by the Indian public education system. Our mission is to transfer knowledge and wealth from the top to the bottom of the pyramid. We believe this is one of the ways for societies to become prosperous, peaceful and equitable.

Who does your solution serve? In what ways will the solution impact their lives?

Sarva in Sanskrit means All. Our mission is to serve all through music education and training for skill development.

We are a social enterprise, so all our actions are aimed at serving the underprivileged. We take inspiration from the Narayana Health model and have adapted it to our framework. We generate revenue by charging those who can pay and utilise the revenue collected to provide free training and certifications to under-resourced youth. The target group is slum dwelling kids between 8-17 yrs, who are students of NGOs/Gurukuls run by philanthropists. One such organisation is Aravindam Foundation, which provides free vocational training in arts to over 300 under-served youth of Dharam Slums, Gurgaon.

Sarva currently trains ~40 students from Aravindam in Drum Set, Guitar and Vocals. We get them certified from Rockschool (RSL, UK) - a globally recognised organisation offering certified vocational music training.

The Indian public education system does not prepare students for the real world. It is mostly the underprivileged who go to public schools. They are exposed to rote learning and are taught little (or no) life skills to extricate them from poverty. Sarva Foundation aims to change that by providing internationally recognised vocational music education to under-resourced youth.

We train these learners to enable them to become teachers, performers, composers, music technicians or just to become more disciplined and self-confident in life. This creates a positive and permanent impact on the learners as individuals and as members of their communities.

What steps have you taken to understand the needs of the population you want to serve?

Before we launched Sarva Foundation in July 2020, we volunteered at Aravindam Foundation Gurukul for 18 months. During our time there, we noticed that Aravindam was in fact providing vocational training to its students. So, we thought of turning Maadhav's proficiency at Drums into an opportunity to provide less privileged youth with vocational skills to earn a living for themselves and their families. But, we also realised that we would need to provide them with tangible results to keep them motivated, so we decided to train them in the same curriculum (RSL) which Maadhav was following. Certification from RSL would set our learners on the path to socio-economic independence in future.

Once he started training the learners, Maadhav faced time constraints as he had school (and so did they), so scheduling classes and practice sessions was a challenge. To overcome this, we implemented the 'Train the Trainer' pedagogy, wherein once a learner clears a level, she/he becomes a trainer for a new learner. This ensures the learning continues even when the primary instructor is not available. In addition, the learners not only improve their own skills, but also gain confidence to teach, which will be very helpful as they seek to become music professionals in the future.

By implementing this methodology, the learner pipeline has become solid a virtuous cycle has been created between the learners and the mentors.

Which aspects of the Challenge does your solution most closely address?

Other: Addressing an unmet social, environmental, or economic need not covered in the four dimensions above

What is the unmet need that your solution tried to address? Why is it important?

Sarva's solution is aligned to five dimensions - Learning (Vocational Training), Social Upliftment, Economic Prosperity, Health (Mental Wellbeing) and Protecting the Environment (combatting climate change by reducing carbon emissions by providing online learning and by using recycled building materials for building a Music Room for our under-resourced learners).

Our social impact activity has led to a huge increase in the morale and confidence of our learners. Their accomplishments – which have gone unrecognised in the past – have now been validated by an international certification body. To top that, 2 of our learners have been adjudged National Champions and bestowed with the RSL High Achievers Awards.

The vocational training we provide enables our learners to become teachers, performers, composers, music technicians or just to become more disciplined and self-confident in life. 9 out of 10 of our learners achieve Passed with Distinction (>90% score) result in their respective RSL grade exams.

This not only makes them well qualified to get gainful employment in future, but also enhances their self-esteem and attitude towards life. They get a real chance to find well-paying and respectable employment, which leads to socio-economic upliftment and mental wellbeing. Hence, a virtuous cycle of peace & prosperity is created in their lives, which is extremely important for society as a whole.

Our solution's stage of development:

Pilot: An organization deploying a tested product, service, or business model in at least one community

Explain why you selected this stage of development for your solution—in other words, what have you accomplished to date?

Sarva's business model is tested, both with our paying and non-paying learners. We have over 10 paid learners, who contribute revenue, which in turn funds free of cost training and certification of our ~40 under-served learners of Aravindam India Gurukul. We have also recently recruited Volunteer Mentors for Drum Set, Indian Vocals and Electric Guitar respectively. These are students, who have been learning their instruments for over 3 years and are interested to teach.

So, Sarva is poised to grow. We're not only looking to expand our service offering to more instruments, such as Violin, Keyboard, Tabla, Sitar etc., but also actively engaging with more youth-centred NGOs which can provide us with under-served learners to train. Since the entire model is online, scaling up to different geographies will not be challenge. All we need is for our learners to have the musical instruments, a laptop and a good internet connection!

As mentioned before, we're pitching to Microsoft India to support us with hardware (laptops), so that we can offer them to the NGOs we work with and with building our technology platform (by integrating Teams and other productivity solutions to our website), so we can make this a seamless experience.

Where our solution team is headquartered or located:

Gurgaon, Haryana, India

Team Lead:

Maadhav Sood