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the sarpanch said ‘no’.
e
Gram Panchayat office was indifferent. But
aſter some persuasion, the Deuli Gram
Panchayat Math Contest was finally held in
Mayurbhanj district, Odisha. Annapurna
Panda had entered 5 of her brightest,
primary school students, all of whom were
from poor, tribal families. To her elation,
2 of them won prizes in the competition.
e exposure and confidence this gave her
students was unparalleled. is contest is
one of the current programmes of the highly
impactful NGO, Akshara Foundation, which
was born of the belief that quality education
is the undeniable right of every child and
that children should not be deprived of this
just because they do not have access to it or
the resources to realize their dreams.
ere are over 1 million government
schools in India but most are victims
of poor infrastructure, low quality of
teaching or lack of qualified teachers,
outmoded methodologies of teaching and
learning and many such issues. Akshara
works to establish a ‘learning enabling
ecosystem’ to try and bring about a systemic
transformation in the schools it works
with. ‘True scale and sustainability can only
be achieved when the community starts
Akshara
Foundation
•
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•
e Building Blocks learning app reinforces maths
concepts children learn in government schools
Founded by Shri Upendra Tripathy and
C.V. Madhukar in 2000
Akshara Foundation is a tripartite
partnership between the government,
corporate, and the voluntary
sector, with the mission ‘Making
our Education Systems work for
every child’. The organization, a
Public Charitable Trust, focuses on
blended models that can accelerate
conventional learning through
accessible technology-based
innovations for teachers & children,
impacting over 7 million children
in Karnataka, Odisha & Andhra
Pradesh. Akshara’s Math Programme
GKA gained global recognition as
one of six successful programmes
worldwide to have improved early
grade numeracy outcomes at scale
by RTI International. Building
Blocks was acclaimed among top
100 most scalable and impactful
edtech innovations globally in The
HundrED Global Collection 2024.