Education should be the birthright of every individual but in a country like India where almost 60% of the population lives in villages with little or no access to even basic primary education, the need to empower children is imperative. While the task isn’t an easy one, here are three companies that are bridging the digital divide by making access to education possible in rural areas:
Founded by Dr Ragib Hasan, a computer science professor at the University of Alabama, the Shikkhok.com project aims to provide free online education and high-quality courses in Bengali to disadvantaged students in Bangladesh and India. The platform brings together educators and researchers from all over the world to create free-of-cost content about both basic and advanced topics, to develop a model for ultra-low-cost online education for students in the developing world and to serve as an open, free, and cheaper alternative to traditional educational institutions. Its app has videos, lectures and course materials in easily understandable formats. The app is available on the Play Store. Download it here.
A Bangalore based non-profit, Agastya provides educational help to rural areas in the form of schools, science centers and more. Its Mobile Science Vans take science education to a village’s doorstep, it runs more than 260 Night Village Schools, has 108 Chemistry ‘Labs in Boxes’ and maintains a 172-acre Creativity Lab campus in Andhra Pradesh. It is currently one of the biggest hands-on learning programs in the world and aims to bolster creativity in children aged between 6 and 18. The Agastya model has already been adopted by over 5 million children and over 2,00,000 teachers in 12 states in India!
An EdTech or education-tech company based in New Delhi, 4S Learning aims to reach children in rural, remote locations. Its “Digital Education In A Box” literally involves learning from a mobile box. This portable container is made of locally sourced material, solar powered and connected to the world wide web via a wired and a wireless local area network. It has digital content in most native languages and aims to facilitate learning and skill development by taking student engagement and proficiency levels to a new high.