Samaanubhaba: Creating a Joyful Environment for Children

In today’s accelerated pace of life, the expectation of parents and teachers from children are higher which puts them in a difficult position, creating a lot of pressure and stress on them to constantly perform at high levels. This can lead to uneasy consequences, such as anxiety, depression, and burnout. According to a recent study conducted by NCERT in 2022, about 3.8 lakh students from various grades, gender, and types of schools in the country have expressed their concerns about experiencing frequent mood swings. The study revealed that as many as 81 percent of the respondents identified academics as the primary source of their behavioral issues.  

Now let’s steer our focus on the children residing in underserved neighborhoods where children don’t even have access to basic amenities. So, in these locations providing equal learning opportunities for better grades and academic progress becomes the sole purpose. In this tide of providing solutions for better educational development, schools tend to overlook the social-emotional development of children. Also, in households of these children, parents earn their livelihood from contractual work and spend very little non-constructive time with their children. So, the parent-children relationship becomes distant and weakens over time. These children tend to hide their emotions from their parents and ultimately drown themselves in their problems. Supporting the above, according to the ASER Report 2019 approximately 30-40% of students are unable to identify emotions and nearly 40% of students lack empathy for their peers, only 2.5% demonstrate the ability to resolve a conflict through communication. A recent study, Cognitive and Affective Skills Study (CASS) by the Centre for Science of Student Learning (CSSL) also demonstrates that SEL skills among students are low across government schools, where nearly 40% of students perceive anger to be a positive emotion. The latest edition of Accidental Death & Suicides in India (ADSI) by the National Crime Record Bureau (NCRB) also shows some disturbing figures in the section: Educational status-wise distribution of suicides. As per the report, the year 2021 witnessed a staggering 164,000 suicide cases of individuals pursuing education, out of which over 39,000 students were educated up to matriculation. In our experience the primary reasons for the above can be schools overlooking SEL over academic subjects, teachers may not have adequate training to effectively understand and teach SEL in classrooms, and SEL not being a part of the school curriculum.    

For this problem to be addressed effectively, it is essential that teachers are provided with extensive SEL training as part of their regular training program, as well as SEL curriculums in schools becoming mandatory and students practicing SEL competencies in their classrooms.

Samaanubhaba is designed to support the mental well-being of children in the classroom and at home. The program aims at creating a safe and healthy environment in the classroom by enabling teachers to facilitate SEL (Social Emotional Learning) in schools. And empower parents and the community to support their children's emotional well-being at home. The program uses a variety of games, stories, and activities that can be practiced at home quite easily.

Objective:

1. Help school teachers understand and regulate their emotions
2. Enable teachers to assist students to understand their emotions in the classroom
3. Integrate social and emotional learning into the school curriculum
4. Create a healthy and safe environment in the classroom

A classroom is more than just a physical space, it is a dynamic environment where the quality of interaction between teachers and students can significantly impact learning outcomes. Hence, it is pertinent to address the mental well-being of both teachers and children in the classroom. A teacher wears many hats and the weight of each hat is unimaginable. So, ThinkZone capacitates teachers to identify their own emotions arising in the classroom and ways they can manage those emotions. As well as create a healthy space in school where children can share their feelings and express their emotions without any hesitation.       

ThinkZone adopted a community-based approach to address the mental well-being of children. Parents and the community help build an immediate environment for a child. After six hours of schooling in a day, a child spends the rest hours at home and in the community with friends and elders. And it affects a child's behavior to an enormous extent. ThinkZone works with families and communities to create awareness about the social-emotional needs of a child and create a conducive environment to foster the mental well-being of children.

Approach: Currently, ThinkZone is implementing low-tech solutions to provide support to teachers and parents. We have developed a WhatsApp chatbot service and mobile application to support teachers. The application contains training modules and instructional learning activities for teachers to follow and engage with children. WhatsApp chatbot service provides teachers with additional support and expert guidance. By utilizing automated calls, text messages, and WhatsApp chatbots parents are provided with gamified activities to practice with children at home. Parents can use our toll-free number to access our SEL content and speak with education experts. The activities are easy to understand and parents of any learning level can perform these activities with their children. Once a month, school teachers will conduct workshops for parents and sensitize them about various social-emotional learning-related topics.

Pedagogy: We follow an activity-based (games, stories, etc) method for the contents. The stories, games, and activities are carefully curated keeping the context and needs of each child in view. These are simple in nature, parents and children can easily comprehend and apply them in real life. 

To address these challenges, our program, Samaanubhaba, aims to empower parents and school teachers to support children's mental well-being. By enabling parents to recognize and understand their children's emotions and providing them with tools to communicate with their children effectively, we hope to create a more supportive and nurturing home environment.  

In addition, we work with school teachers to facilitate Social Emotional Learning (SEL) in the classroom, which helps children recognize and express their emotions in a healthy and constructive way. This creates a safe and healthy environment for children in the classroom where they can share their feelings without hesitation. By building healthy relationship skills and developing coping mechanisms to navigate different stresses, children will build resilience and perseverance that will help them succeed in school and beyond.  

Overall, our intervention aims to address the emotional needs of children from underserved neighborhoods by providing support to teachers and parents, creating a safe and healthy environment in the classroom, and empowering families to foster the social and emotional well-being of their children. By doing so, we hope to improve the lives of these children and help them succeed academically and in life.

ThinkZone's team is uniquely positioned to design and deliver this solution to the target population because of their years of experience working in underserved communities and providing quality learning opportunities for children in primary schools. The team lead and members have a deep understanding of the challenges faced by children in these communities because they are representative of them. They come from similar backgrounds, have lived in these communities, and understand the cultural context and social issues that impact the lives of the people they serve.  

To understand the needs of the communities they serve, the team used a Participatory Rural Approach (PRA) by conducting focus group discussions with parents, school teachers, and community leaders. They also interviewed school leaders, educational experts, and mental health professionals, and conducted secondary research on children's mental well-being. This approach helped the team build trust with the community and ensure that the design and implementation of the program were guided by the community's input, ideas, and agendas.  

The program structure was developed based on the feedback received from the community, and the draft was modified accordingly. Before the intervention was rolled out, it was piloted in 50 schools to ensure its effectiveness. The team also has dedicated on-field program associates who communicate periodically in person and via phone calls with parents and school teachers to monitor the program's progress and effectiveness.

Overall, ThinkZone's team is uniquely positioned to design and deliver this solution to the target population because of their proximity to the communities they serve, their understanding of their needs, and their experience in working in these communities.

The inception of state-wide implementation of the SEL program requires a policy-level implication of SEL in the school curriculum and teacher’s training program, which requires enough evidence to convince the effectiveness and sustainability of our intervention to the state government. We applied to Solve to connect to potential Solver teams for a monetary partnership to implement our program in our current implementation geographies and gather substantial evidence to sustainably scale it in our state. Acknowledging the fact that MIT Solve also provides an influential network for extensive guidance and support, we will be needing professional guidance to fine-tune our program structure and conduct outcome evaluation to measure the effectiveness of our program

It is assumed by many in our community that Social Emotional Learning is of less importance and hence is not incorporated into the curriculum of educational institutions, so incorporating SEL into school curricula is an innovation in itself. In addition to this, our assimilation of tech-based and low-tech solutions for improving the SEL of students is a unique and convenient way as it makes learning more interactive and burdenless. Acknowledging the equal importance of parents, communities, and teachers in children's holistic development our solution will build a bridge of collaborative efforts between schools as well as parents & communities through community-level workshops, camps, and events.

For the next year, we are willing to expand our program to cover all primary schools (2000 schools) in one district of Odisha, India. Reach and empower 100,000 parents and children from underserved communities. Capacitate 50,000 teachers on Social Emotional Learning (SEL) and equip them with the necessary tools and resources to facilitate SEL in the classroom.  

Our vision for next five years is to scale our program to cover all primary schools across Odisha, India. Keeping in mind that our solution brings a holistic change in life of students our impact goals for next 5 years are mentioned hereunder.  

• Integrate our solution into the school curriculum in collaboration with the Government to ensure sustainability and scalability.
• Impact 1 million parents and children across the state and help them build healthy relationships and coping mechanisms for life.
• Dedicate at least one teacher per school for conducting SEL camps and monitoring parents to ensure continuous engagement and support.

To achieve our impact goals, we will collaborate with the Government, NGOs, and community-based organizations. We will train and mentor local staff, including program associates and master trainers, to ensure high-quality delivery of the program. Continuous monitoring and evaluation will be conducted to measure the program's impact and effectiveness. Technology such as the ThinkZone Support App and live dashboards will be used to streamline program management and enhance stakeholder engagement. We will also cultivate strong partnerships with parents, school leaders, and community members to foster ownership and sustainability of the program.

Here are the indicators and their corresponding data sources, current metrics, and any additional information:  

Indicator: Number of parents reached

Data Source: WhatsApp chatbot, MIS

Current metric: 2657 parents in 50 schools (pilot stage)

Additional information: More than 50,000 parents have been reached in 6 districts.    

Indicator: Number of school teachers capacitated

Data Source: ThinkZone MIS (the no. of teachers registered)

Current metric: 50 school teachers and 50 head teachers    

Indicator: Number of children reached

Data Source: School portal

Current metric: 3791 students in 50 schools    

Indicator: Children can recognize emotion

Data Source: Report from students, Report from parents and Report from teachers

Current metric: Not available    

Indicator: Children can express their feelings

Data Source: Report from students, Report from parents and Report from teachers

Current metric: Not available    

Indicator: Children feeling happy

Data Source: Report from students, Report from parents and Report from teachers

Current metric: Not available    

Indicator: Children keep an optimistic view of life

Data Source: Report from students, Report from parents and Report from teachers

Current metric: Not available  

Indicator: Improved classroom behavior 

Data source: Report from teachers  

Current metric: Not available  

*Please note that indicators 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8 are currently being measured through qualitative assessments and do not have specific metrics at this time. And we realized that this is a limited list of indicators, and more indicators can be added.

Aim: Incorporating SEL into the curriculum of Government primary schools with extensive participation from parents and teachers in order to address the psychological well-being of children through accessible tech-enabled solutions.  

Activities

• Capacity building of school teachers to facilitate SEL program in schools
• Parental Engagement (IVR, SMS and voice calls) and in-person community and parents outreach programs
• Design & contextual activities, stories, games and assimilating in mobile application
• SEL Program Delivery (activity-based teaching, assessments, data tracking etc.)
• Program Monitoring
• Program Partnerships with Government and Private Organizations

Outputs

• Number of students who have been directly enrolled in our programs
• No of community outreach and SEL workshops successfully conducted
• Number of hours of learning modules consumed by parents/children
• Number of teachers who have been upskilled in components SEL and number of children who developed SEL competencies
• No of Hours of training (offline and online) successfully completed by teachers
• Number of partners officially onboarded

Short-term Outcome

• Children become more confident and develop self-esteem and maneuver essential skills like problem-solving, conflict resolution, etc.
• Teachers facilitate SEL sessions in schools
• Improvement of the teacher-student relationship in the classroom
• Parents devote time to practice SEL activities at home

Long-term Outcome

• SEL becomes an integral part of the school curriculum.
• Students are future-prepared for better academics and career success.
• Positive teacher-student in the classroom.
• Improved mental and physical health (less stress and anxiety with no scope of self-harm)
• All students achieve enhanced Social-Emotional skills.
• Parents able to practice SEL activities at home without any support

Assumption

• Teachers will be using the entire technology platform and training pedagogy.
• Technological innovation will play a large role in improving teaching and children’s educational experiences.
• There is adequate digital infrastructure and literacy within the targeted community for this to happen.
• Activity-based teaching makes a concept easier and will lead to improved learning outcomes for children
• Parents and the community will be actively involved.

Enablers

• Partnership with different social enterprises, non-profits, and corporate entities to scale our program in implementation areas.
• Partnership with the state government to include SEL in the school curriculum.

Preventers

• Lack of funds for running the program
• Teachers feel burdened with SEL inclusion in training
• Failure in state-level partnership
• Communities unable to grasp SEL components

Technology plays a very important role in project implementation. The school teachers will access the offline-based ThinkZone mobile application, which provides play-based teaching content and they can follow a standardized set of instructions in vernacular language (Odia) to engage with students in the classroom. The ThinkZone mobile application will also help teachers to manage children’s records, evaluate & track learning goals, capture real-time data, and use gamified modules to learn about SEL competencies.

For the purpose of monitoring and support, we have also adopted a tech-based approach which includes ThinkZone Support App and a centralized dashboard. The ThinkZone support App will be used by the monitoring on-field and have access to the number of students enrolled, students' attendance, educator’s engagement period in the app, etc. which aids them to monitor the educators and teachers remotely and provide support accordingly.  

To supplement the SEL competencies of students further SEL-based stories and instructional learning activities in the vernacular language (Odia) will be sent to students through low-cost technologies like IVR, SMS, and phone calls. These stories and learning activities are simplified instructional content for parents of any learning background and level. The parents are expected to carry out these activities twice a week at their convenient time to improve SEL outcomes in a home environment. Additionally, the same content can be accessed through WhatsApp Chatbot in the form of interactive video-based stories.

In our enterprise more than 60% of team members are female, also our leadership team consists of both male and female members. Our organization provides a knowledge-sharing environment for everyone and conquers a higher position in the organization hierarchy. Our internal communication is tailored to the needs of the organization, and employees are encouraged to provide feedback. Additionally, we have a workspace software tool in which all the necessary information is accessible to all employees and provide them with the information they need to do their jobs. Children being our primary stakeholders we follow a child protection policy and over time we have developed policies and practices to encourage gender equality in our organization which includes equal pay, equal access to resources, and equal representation in leadership roles. Every year annual reports are published mentioning our work and the impact of our intervention concerning our beneficiaries. We also carry out internal evaluations and encourage independent evaluation of our intervention to measure our impact.

We have always been following this very simple approach to building and growing our organization. We started with a B2C model and as we started scaling we realized that this was not the way to go. This is because of the poor socio-economic background of the parents we were targeting. Our end-users; parents and children could not pay for our services. So we pivoted to a B2B2C model which has helped us sustain and grow.

ThinkZone implements a B2B2C business model by directly reaching out to end-users via formal financial partnerships with corporates, public entities, governments, foundations, non-profits, and social enterprises. Our solution is always free for the end-users (children, parents, teachers, community educators, etc.). The formal partnerships include ThinkZone implementing the entire program or licensing a particular part of our entire program offerings like technology, content, and training modules.

ThinkZone’s plan for financial sustainability is to implement our programs in partnerships with public and private players (B2B2C). We have started doing the same since 2019 and our sustainability goal for the next 3-4 years is to build out more earned income strategies through corporate engagement programs and reduce our dependence on grants to 20% of our entire incoming revenues. We also want to have innovative financing models like social impact bonds.

Starting from a small scale and slowly expanding - we have been pretty clear in our organizational journey that our revenues should be more than our expenses! When we shifted to the B2B2C model, we realized that implementing a  B2B2C model is easier said than done as our end-users i.e. parents and teachers don’t pay for our services. Our customers or financial partners are foundations, corporations, and government, and finalizing financial partnerships requires patience and follow-up. So we have a multi-level partnership approach wherein private money helps us unlock government money after showing impact to public stakeholders. As an organization, it is important to learn from the previous model, be flexible in your approach, and pivot or modify the course of action.

We would like to have technical partnerships with more local/grassroots-based organization and provide them with adequate technology and program support for deploying our innovation. We are making sure that our innovation can reach all children irrespective of socio-economic backgrounds by actively looking at government partnerships and then empowering the appropriate stakeholders with required technical know-how.

We currently work in a multi-level partnership mode (government and corporates/foundations etc.) and intend to scale our solution across geographies using the same approach. Such an approach helps us in scaling our solution faster and our innovation deployment is not hindered due to delay in adequate budgetary allocation by the government for the required solution.

ThinkZone has raised 100k USD in convertible debt and equity from GMC & Villgro(INVENT) in 2017 & 2018. Apart from that ThinkZone has also raised 130k USD in grants from different public and private entities between 2017-2020. Some of them are BPCL, Unltd India, US Distribution Inc., Learning Equality, NSRCEL-IIM Bangalore, and Department of MSME, Govt. of Odisha. ThinkZone generates revenues by partnering with the government, corporates, and social organizations. In the last 12 months, ThinkZone's revenues have been 305k USD via project implementation grants and project implementation fees from international foundations and corporates like Fondation Botnar, Adani Foundation, HDFC, UBL, International Youth Foundation, Learning Engineering, etc. We are looking to raise 300,000 US Dollars over the next two years for furthering the development & deploying our solution.

The median expenditure per student by the government on education is around $14 per month whereas other big NGOs/organizations spend $4-10 per month per child on different education initiatives. Our solution is implementing learner-centric, cost-effective, and low-tech solutions at <$1 per month (overall, including operations, partnerships, technology, content, and management costs) which is one of the lowest if we compare the financial budgets of social enterprises across the world. This is possible because we strongly advocate and implement a community-level approach (‘vocal for local’ approach) i.e. we identify, train, and continuously support local change-makers who become an important part of our core ThinkZone team.