Ten-year-old Rajkumar Singh’s excitement is futile as he marks the end of the school day at SDMC Pratibha School in Delhi’s Defense Colony. Her favorite part of the day is just about to begin – after-school math lessons.
What fuels this love for a subject often feared by his classmates?
Prince says his mentor Savya Mittal is the reason why these classes are “exciting and fun”. Savya is one of the 100 student volunteers who have registered on the ‘Volunteers for MCD Schools’ mobile app, an initiative of Delhi resident Anant Bagrodia, himself a Class 12 student at Vasant Valley School.
Savya also thoroughly enjoys the teaching process as Prince marvels at how mathematics can be simplified to such a degree. As the two spread out their notes, ready for the next class of learning mixed with fun, Anant says that this was the purpose of starting the mobile app.
“It all started as a passion project,” he explains.
The decision to educate children
The 16-year-old, who is currently in her own studies and additional textbooks, reflects on an anecdote shared by her mother about shaping this unique journey.
Shivani, Anant’s mother will devote hours to teaching underprivileged children in MCD schools as part of a volunteer project. Sometime in January, he mentioned to his son how he would tutor several children, when one child caught his attention. Prince, as she later told Anant, was a bright child who could grasp concepts well with the right tutoring and help.
“But he is struggling now,” said Anant’s mother. With the intention of helping the boy in some way, Anant took up the challenge and decided to devote two hours every week to it. Over the video call, she and Prince will bond, learn the nuances of English grammar and the former will clear the latter’s doubts.
This continued for two months and Anant’s friends – who had seen how the experience had changed him – also wanted to help. “However, even though many fellow students were interested in teaching minority children, there was no system for that,” says Anant, adding that it was only during the pandemic that the state of the educational infrastructure became apparent and gave him the final push. He needed to find a solution.
“After the school shifted online, countless children from government schools who did not have access to computers and internet lost the opportunity to go to school for almost two years.” Anant says this meant they were on par with other kids their age who had access to technology.
Looking deeper into the research, he discovered that Annual Report on Education 2020 Only 8.1 percent of children attend online classes in government schools.
This, he pointed out, led to a significant educational gap that only worsened as an epidemic. The problem won’t go away, he thought, but will intensify as schools reopen. This is because to make up for lost time, these children need additional support to strengthen their understanding and supplement their education.
“I saw this myself, when I was busy tutoring the Prince,” he remarked. “Like Prince, there were many other students who needed immediate assistance, whose parents might not be able to afford the tuition classes without taking on a heavy financial burden.”
This web of problems was a solution.
Creating an app that can stimulate learning
While deciding on the target group for his experiment, Anant chose children from Delhi’s MCD school. The reason lies in the fact that these schools lacked digital infrastructure to conduct online classes during the pandemic.
The months from May 2022 to July 2022 were spent discussing his plans with school officials, detailing how the extra tutoring would greatly benefit the children. The latter was overwhelmingly in agreement with Ananta’s proposal. Now it was time to get started on the app.
Always having a fascination for technology, machine learning, and data science, Anant applied this repertoire of skills and, by September of that year, was ready for launch. “The platform connects students in need of support with willing student volunteers. Through this model, I hope to instill a sense of volunteerism in young people and address the educational disparities brought forward by the pandemic before it’s too late.”
Today, there are 19 MCD schools across Delhi — including areas like Kailash Colony, Vasant Vihar, Hauz Khas, Defense Colony, and Lajpat Nagar — that have been helped through the app. The app is available for download on the Google Play Store and has over 100 student volunteers who have registered to dedicate their time and skills to helping these children.
“Students from class 6 to 10 can volunteer,” says Anant. “Once they register on the app, the principal of the respective MCD school will contact them explaining the needs of students who need special attention.”
These student volunteers not only help children with math, science, English, history and other academic subjects, but also conduct chess workshops, music lessons, life skills training, activities like solving Rubik’s Cube, basketball training, and more.
These classes are conducted at times mutually decided by the school and the student volunteer based on the convenience of both. Sometimes they are after school hours, sometimes it is on weekends.
Rahul Kumar, who studies in class four at MCD Primary School in Andrews Ganj, says his favorite class was the chess workshop taught by Sara Mehta.
“I learned chess from Sarah, who was very kind and understanding. She helped me learn how to play chess step by step,” he added. These activities cultivate a sense of curiosity in children, expand their horizons beyond the four walls of the classroom and introduce them to many things.
Student volunteers also say these classes are exciting. Sara, who studied in class 11, has been tutoring for three months, and the experience has been enriching. “This has been the highlight of my week, which I have been eagerly anticipating. The children I work with show remarkable intelligence, and seeing their curiosity and growing interest in learning chess has been truly fulfilling and personally rewarding.”
Anant, meanwhile, continues to expand the idea to reach more schools across Delhi. The young changemaker recently raised funds from friends and family and donated 30 tablets to three of the MCD schools, enabling smart integration of technology into the curriculum. Through the outreach created by the app, they have managed to help more than 600 students, he notes.
Looking back at the trajectory of this unique endeavor and how it shaped him personally, he feels grateful. A love to impart knowledge combined with an idea has now turned into a ray of hope for many students in the national capital.
If you want to become a student volunteer, you can download the app here and register yourself.