An article and short film on Prerna Girls School, written and produced by Shree Paradkar, Toronto Star race and gender columnist, won the Amnesty International Media Awards this year. The Amnesty International Media Awards are a unique set of awards that pay tribute to the best human rights journalism in the UK. The piece captures Prerna’s use of critical feminist pedagogy to empower young girls from marginalized communities in order to help them break barriers of gender, caste, and class to claim their rights as equal persons, deserving respect and having the right to live a life of their own choosing.

Given the unpredictability of the situation, and the fact that we cannot anticipate when schools will reopen, SHEF is moving all of its teaching and learning activities online. All our schools have begun a new academic session, and the students are receiving assignments, activity-based lessons, and other resources through WhatsApp, so that they can continue learning from home. Where possible, teachers are also using on-line platforms, such as Zoom, to conduct regular classes with their students. This is perhaps most challenging with our children from Prerna Girls and Boys Schools and Vidyasthali. While the children in these schools are also sent activities and assignments through WhatsApp and audio conference calls, there are still many children who do not have access to mobile phones and internet connection. Our teachers are constantly in search of new, creative ways to ensure that they are able to reach all children.
SHEF is also promoting its online library of virtual lessons prepared by Digital Study Hall (DSH), so that children everywhere can continue to learn. DSHOnline has more than 1000 high-quality classroom video lessons for classes 1 to 8 available free of cost on YouTube. In just the past month, since the start of the COVID19 crisis, our viewership has increased threefold!

In partnership with Didi’s, SHEF has produced and distributed close to 1000 washable face masks to various hospitals and others across Lucknow. We have also distributed 140 packets of sanitary napkins to 125 girls with the help of Prerna alumni. We are working to produce reusable sanitary pads for girls who don’t have access to these necessities during the lockdown.

We understand that these are times that are particularly challenging for children, especially girls from underprivileged backgrounds who live in fragile and abusive environments. We have received notice of 3 cases of domestic violence, and our Aarohini team has taken quick action to resolve them with the help of the child helpline. The team has also made and shared a video on how girls can stay safe and protect themselves from domestic and sexual violence, including who they can reach out to for help. Our helpline numbers have been included in Shakti Shalini’s (a nationally recognised NGO working to prevent gender/sexual violence) pan-India list of organistation offering support to survivours during the lockdown.
We are also working to maintain close vigilance through our alumni and teachers at Prerna Girls School, as the girls who attend Prerna are one of the most vulnerable populations. In times like these, they are at a higher risk of facing domestic and sexual violence.

Study Hall Educational Foundation (SHEF), through its partner organisation Didi’s Foods, is providing 1130 meals per day to a community kitchen set up by the Government of Uttar Pradesh. These meals are being served to migrant labourers in the Gomti Nagar area.

Since the schools first closed due to COVID19, SHEF’s teachers have been innovating new ways to engage their students over the phone and internet to ensure that the learning continues. The last few weeks have truly been an exploration into the territory of distance teaching and learning! From which online platform to use, to how to engage children who don’t have internet access, our teachers are working hard to find the best way to reach their students during this time. (A few more lines here on what they’re doing/how it’s been going.)

Now moving into our 6th week of lockdown, Dr. Sahni has a message for them as they continue to explore.

Satyam, 8 years old, is a student of our GyanSetu center in Nabipanah, a village 33 km outside of Lucknow. He lives with his brother (16) and grandmother. Satyam lost his father when he was younger. After the mishap, his mother started a roadside tea stall and his brother got a job as a small-time caterer on a contractual basis to support the family. Things only got worse when his mother met with an accident. Despite the fact that the family gave up their life savings for her treatment, she eventually succumbed to her injuries on Mar 20, leaving Satyam’s brother as the sole breadwinner of the family. The recent pan-India lockdown has taken away their only source of income to sustain their livelihood.

Our GyanSetu team reached out to Satyam and his family to know of their well-being. They realized that the family was in dire need of food, on the brink of starvation. For now, our center has donated a few essential items to help Satyam and his family get by. Someone from our team is constantly in touch with them to make sure they are able to make ends meet. The team has also spoken to the local Pradhan (head of the village), who assured us he would make arrangements to help the family at this time.

Because the populations SHEF serves are particularly vulnerable in the current situation, our teachers and staff are reaching out to students on a regular basis to check on their safety and well-being. In this way, our teachers are also able to assess the overall situation in these communities and ascertain which needs are most pressing. Much like Satyam and his family, the vast majority are facing food shortages as a result of the lockdown, which has left so many without work and with little means to sustain themselves at this critical time.

We are currently working to provide essential food items to these children and their families, especially as we anticipate conditions worsening as the lockdown continues. If you wish to join our efforts.
Please contact Siddharth at siddharth@studyhallfoundation.org

Stay safe and healthy.

During these distressed times as an organisation, we are always thinking of ways to help those less fortunate and are working hard to serve our communities.
Our GyanSetu team is in touch with the local communities and are trying to find individuals and families who are in desperate need of our help.
Pictured here is food distribution in Aurangabad, Lucknow facilitated by Gyansetu teachers.

Dear Parents,

How are you all? I hope you are keeping safe and healthy! Happy Ram Navmi! I  know this is a very trying and frightening time for all of us! I was thinking this morning that perhaps, many of you have not seen a crisis of this proportion in your life time. All those in my generation have that advantage over you! My parents survived the second world war and the horrors of partition as they fled separately with their families from Rawalpindi in August 1947. He was 20 and she was 16.

They were married on 30^th January 1948. The day Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated! My heart trembles when I think of the trauma they must have suffered!  Displaced – homeless, penniless and frightened at the horrendous violence around them!  I was born in 1955. I remember all the stories they told me about how they felt and how they coped!

In my own life time, I remember the Indo-China War of 1962 and the war with Pakistan in 1971 and of course all the terrorist attacks around the world in more recent times!  I mention all this – just to put things in perspective for all of us – Especially for those of you who are young and haven’t really experienced anything like this.  The world looks and feels like it is ending and coming apart! I want to calm you down – the world DID fall apart during the second world war. Crores of people died. The economy crumbled and  the infrastructure in much of  Europe and Russia was destroyed! It seemed to many that the world would never recover from this massive shock!   But it did! It took time and it recovered and was rebuilt and it thrived!

Our own beloved country was actually riven apart – torn cruelly into 2! Again millions died and many more were displaced! Our countries also survived the shock, rebuilt ourselves and have been thriving relatively better than we did before partition. My own parents died in their 80’s after being married for 65 years, had 5 children, 11 grand children and 5 great grand children! My father built a company of national and international significance with no resources. They thrived too!

I say all the above, not to minimize the gravity of the health, economic and social crisis facing us all, but to put it in perspective!  The world and previous generations have survived much bigger shocks and we will survive this one too. Maybe crises are sent to each generation to test our resilience, our courage, our patience, our creativity and our goodness in the face of hardship. To give us an opportunity to think and reflect also, about the state of our universe, our own ways of living and relating with each other and the universe we all inhabit.  Maybe this is an opportunity to change! To build a more humane, egalitarian, eco friendly, more caring and sharing, less greedy and selfish universe!  Maybe if we can rise above our fear right now, and look at the lessons we are learning, see that some of the changes this crisis is forcing us to make are actually good for us, for others and the universe we all inhabit, we will emerge stronger and better and together we will build a stronger better world in which everyone can flourish.

I appeal to my dear SHEF family of which you are an integral part, to remain positive! Let us all be careful ofcourse, but not fearful!  Fear does not help anyone! Least of all us!  Our children are also scared! Let’s take care of their fears! Let’s not consume fearful news 24/7 and definitely let’s not spread it around. Let’s look for good news instead and take heart from it! This is NOT the plague! It might infect us, but will kill only very very few of us!  And it will end like other pandemics have in the past.  Our country has the fact that majority of our people are young, our natural immunity and hopefully the hot weather on its side. China has beaten the virus and so will we.

Let’s take care of ourselves and our families of course, but let us not be so self-protective that we harm others in our community.  Let us quarantine those who are infected, in our neighbourhoods, but NOT ostracise them and make them out to be criminals and pariahs! They need our help, not our condemnation.

Let us be grateful for everything that we have, all our privileges and advantages, but let’s not forget those who are much less fortunate than ourselves and much more vulnerable to disease and hunger right now.  Let us actively seek them out in our neighbourhoods and help them in everyway we can. It is our opportunity to care and share.  There is a great deal we can do while maintaining the social distancing.

Studyhall Educational Foundation (SHEF) is doing everything we can.  Our entire workforce – 400 strong, has donated one days salary and some of us have done more than that – which we are using to support DIDIs to make and deliver 700 meals to the Government community kitchen in Gomti nagar for poor migrant labourers who need the food. We will continue to do this till the lockdown ends and beyond.  Thank you to the kind efforts of some of our parents who helped us get the curfew passes that made this possible.

Our teachers, students and alumni from all our schools and centres that work with poor rural and urban populations (3350 students in all) are working daily from home to find out what our students and their families need and to link them with government relief schemes and our own relief schemes.  They are working tirelessly to manage  and dispel their fears, providing accurate information about COVID 19 and how to stay safe.  Our school counselor is available to students who need help with fear and anxiety. Our alumni are doing peer counseling too.

As you know our teachers are also providing virtual lessons. It is harder to reach poorer students who lack the necessary infrastructure at their end. But we are becoming as creative as we can to beat those challenges.

We have developed a nearly 2000 video repository of digital lessons on all subjects over many years and are sharing them nationally and internationally through our free YouTube channel DSHonline.  Currently there are nearly 1 lac subscribers and over 1.4 crore views, 10,000 every day, these days.

I appeal to you all, my dear parents to join our effort. Help us with anything you can. Your intellectual resources, your financial contributions – big or small, your compassion and care. You can set up help lines at home. You can share your special expertise – make small videos and send them to us and we will distribute them through our DSHonline YouTube channel.  There are many things you can do to help and we can help you do them. So do reach out to your teachers and Principal if you would like to join us in our effort.

Together we can beat and tame this virus! Let’s join hands, remain positive, brave and resilient! Let’s take care of ourselves AND others and help each other through this! Soon it will be behind us! We can’t control what is happening but we can control how we respond to it and to each other.

With best wishes and love