AMHARTA EDUCATION PRIVATE LIMITED
PUNE, INDIA
20 June 2018
Dear Friends
We all know about the power of education. Education is the greatest empowering force in the world. But this is true for not just any kind of education – certainly not the bookish learning that most schools offer their students! A comprehensive system of education that is directed at and serves to nurture the physical, intellectual, emotional, social, moral and spiritual potentials of children is the kind of education that we wish to promote.
I have been doing my bit, however small, to help improve the quality of education in schools over the past 25 years or so. I come from an engineering background but quickly shifted to the field of education. I helped my parents run a school in Patna, India, for over a decade, and soon it became the tool and means for me to gain firsthand insights, knowledge and experience in the field of education. My focus, during that period and beyond, was on innovations, on how to work with children more effectively, even if it meant to work with them differently. My team and I questioned many classroom conventions and practices, and discovered new and more effective ways of doing things. I went on to study education, along the way doing my Master of Arts in Education, Bachelor of Education, and Diploma in School Management.
I was later moved to share with others whatever I had learned over the years and thus got involved in teacher-training and began working with schools. This has been a very enriching journey for me as I got to learn a great deal from the teachers who attended the numerous teacher-training workshops that I facilitated over the years.
Somewhere along the path, I also got involved in corporate trainings, building on the common elements of human capability development, which is as much relevant to the corporate world as it is to our education system.
I have spent the past 25 years or so in the field of education in various capacities: as a humble student and learner, as a trainer of teachers and school leaders, as a consultant helping schools align their work and organizational culture with sound educational and moral principles, and finally as part of school managements, a position that I currently hold as Principal of RiverDale International School (
http://www.rispune.com/ ).
A New Approach:
I have been moved, in recent times, to try and do something more! A majority of schools continue to advance a kind of education that promotes dependence, rote-learning, competition and a materialistic outlook towards life among children. Heavily dependent on content-based learning, the priority for most schools is to ensure that their students do well in the state and national Board examinations, at the detriment of helping them acquire the essential life-skills, attitudes and values that they inevitably require for future success in their lives.
This desire to do something more than what I was doing until now led me to explore different possibilities and after carefully considering all options, I decided to form a company.
And thus AmHarTa Education Private Limited was recently born!
Why a Company?
I initially wanted to set up a NGO or Trust for creating a platform to work with schools on a large scale. But I soon realized that severe restrictions constrain the functioning of such agencies in India at the moment. The present Government in India, owing to security concerns, does not look favorably upon such not-for-profit agencies which raise substantial resources domestically and from abroad, but remain largely unaccountable in their functioning. The only other option that remained for scaling up my ability of working with an increasingly larger number of educational institutions was to form a company. Companies in India are well regulated and have greater freedom to function. Thus, AmHarTa is now the platform that I hope will enable us reach a larger number of schools with the programs and services that we intend to offer.
Programs and Services:
The programs and services that AmHarTa will offer and deliver to different kinds of educational institutions will, of course, evolve overtime. However, there is sufficient clarity on the basic elements of what we wish to do in our work with schools. These include:
1. Staff training:
This would be a major offering to schools. Apart from focusing on the essential capabilities that teachers need to be more effective in the realms of pedagogy, subject teaching, higher-order thinking, innovations and creativity, classroom management, discipline, assessment and such like, out training interventions will have two unique components:
a) Creating awareness among teachers between their professional work and the essence of their human reality. This is based on the common refrain that a ‘good teacher is first a good human being’! We have learned over the years that teachers begin to appreciate more the importance of their noble work with children, and become more motivated and more effective in their work when they (or for that matter any other group of professionals!) are helped to better understand concepts and principles related to human reality, and clarify for themselves related fundamental questions such as ‘Who am I as a human being?’ ‘What is my true reality?’ ‘What is the purpose of my life?’ ‘What is my inter-relationship with others in society’? And others. Relating the discourse on the role of teachers to the essentials of human reality is a unique capability that we currently possess, and which can be a major USP in our work with teachers.
b) Another unique component of our work with teachers that we have evolved over the years works at the level of attitudes. Most training programs merely focus on skills and information without taking into account the related attitudes that teachers require to be more successful and effective. A teacher with the best skills but with the wrong attitudes will probably be less effective compared to one with the right attitudes but bereft of skills. The teacher’s positive attitudes will help her find her way and acquire the skills and abilities that it takes to be successful. Attitudinal change and mindset conditioning take time and are difficult processes to unfold which is why most teacher-training programs choose to have nothing to do with them. But years of experience in this domain can make the difference between what we have to offer and everything else that is currently available in the market.
2. Accreditation:
The draft new National Education policy (India) highlights the formation of the School Accreditation council empowered to evaluate and accredit schools based on parameters matching international quality standards. Accreditation, which up to now was limited to higher education in India, will soon become mandatory for schools as well. Such accreditation process could lead to the grading of schools which can serve as a good indicator of their quality standards.
Working in the domain of school accreditation thus opens up vast opportunities beyond merely charting out the roadmap for ongoing improvement, but also providing the necessary handholding and follow-up support.
3. Programs of Moral and Value Education:
Many schools do not appreciate the importance of including a meaningful program of value and moral education in their curricula. Those that do, base their programs on a mundane and content based approach which remain largely ineffective.
Schools without a comprehensive and effective program of moral and value education do a great deal of disservice to their students by not helping nurture and develop their moral and spiritual potentialities.
We have acquired, over the years, a considerable amount of insights, knowledge and experience in this field, drawing upon a rich body of research that is now universally available, and on a careful marrying of inspiring content and effective modes of delivery.
4. Skilling Programs:
India has a high and growing percentage of unskilled graduates. These are young professionals who remain largely bereft of basic skills that they require at the workplace. Consequently, once hired they have to be re-trained all over again!
Structuring and running skilling programs among students of undergraduate programs in engineering and management institutions is currently a great need and which we intend to get involved in.
5. Infrastructure enrichment:
I have the pleasure of knowing a few wonderful people who have established schools which, over a short period of time, have become quite popular owing to the sincere and dedicated services of their promoters.
Most of these schools are, however, constrained by their lack of resources needed for acquiring permanent facilities and technical support to ensure ongoing improvement in their education.
I have been working with some of these schools over the years offering them trainings and other technical support. But what these schools need most is the support that will help them acquire their own permanent facilities in order to set them on the path of sustained and accelerated progress. Therefore, infrastructure enrichment is another program that we wish to run to help deserving schools acquire the facilities that will help them enhance their existing capacities, and thus impart the benefit of their educational programs to more students.
The Next Step:
Once the formalities of registering and setting up the company are completed, a lot of work needs to be done to get its programs underway. The following are the most urgent among these:
1. Setting up an office and hiring the necessary in-house staff.
2. Creating the company website and promotional materials like videos, presentations, handouts, brochures, etc.
3. Developing the programs to be offered, and structuring them into deliverable units. This will require input from related experts, and collaboration with other agencies and institutions.
4. Recruiting interested and capable individuals tasked with the responsibility of marketing and promoting the company’s programs on commission basis.
5. Recruiting interested and capable human resources who can deliver the company’s varied programs among schools and other educational institutions on commission basis. Once recruited, these individuals will need to be put through intense and ongoing programs of induction, orientation and training in order to be able to align themselves with the quality of work envisaged.
6. Organising a number of seminars for school leaders in different parts of India to familiarize them with the company’s programs after which follow-up and subsequent contacts is expected to yield the company opportunities of working with them.
Currently, three schools have been identified and lined up for helping them with their infrastructure needs. While two schools need to buy land, the third needs to build on its recently acquired land. A sum of Rs 85 Lakh (USD 125,000) is required to finance these schools.
Returns and Earnings:
Schools and other educational institutions will be required to pay for services rendered. The commercials for the company’s offerings have to still be worked out, but two models of payment are being envisaged at the moment:
1. Payment for stand-alone interventions which is settled by the institution concerned after the intervention.
2. Payment, suitably calculated on the basis of a certain amount per student based on the nature of offerings, which will be made by the institution concerned on monthly basis. Payments against school investments for infrastructure enrichment come under this category.
The intention is to reinvest any profit that accrues from such work back into the company after taking care of administrative and tax compliance related expenses.
How Can You Help?
As you can see from the description of work that needs to be done right away, we require a considerable amount of money to get the company started. Our immediate goal is to raise resources to the tune of Rs 2 Crore (about US$ 300,000). One fourth of this amount has already been raised or pledged. The company can receive foreign investments and so remittances from abroad are welcome. We invite you to consider investing in our company as a means to serve the cause of education in India. If we are successful in our work and able to grow in turnover and scope, you can look forward to receiving dividends on your investment.
You can also pass around the word and put us in touch with people who may be interested in associating with our line of work and investing in our company.
Please contact me on
pshoghi@gmail.com in case you wish to partner us in our work which is going to be meritorious and rewarding. I will be happy to separately provide you with additional information and more details about our work if so required.
Sincerely,
Payam Shoghi
Pune (India)
