TheCSRUniverse Interview: Ms Priyadarshini Nigam, Director- CSR, Newgen Software Technologies

hello viewers a very warm welcome to the CSR University's leaders talk segment and today I'm extremely delighted and privileged to have with us Mrs priyadarshini Nigam director New Gen software technology to share her valuable insights on Eugene's digital literacy and learning programs and initiatives especially under its New Gen digital Discovery parkshala project for which the organization recently won the CSR Universe social impact Awards 2022 for the best social practices in the education domain a hearty welcome to you ma'am thank you thank you so much for giving us this opportunity CSR Universe would like to extend our congratulations to the entire team for winning this very well deserved award thank you and actually ruchika let me tell you it is a team that works at Mutual uh I have an excellent CSR team that puts the program together okay I think that's why that's how we have moved forward and we are able to achieve so much that's wonderful man so that's why ma'am I'm uh moving ahead I'm intrigued to know more about Discovery part Chala how did the idea originate and uh what exactly are the initiatives so okay so it's uh I'll uh cut the story short because I can really talk at length about how we started uh news and digital discovery partiala but the Genesis is in a small organization that we started in 2005 2006 called now we started to help the children of our support staff so all the children of the support staff like uh you know the basically the the salary people they're part of the illusion organization but you see the education is not there because all semi-skilled sure so um the children would come one second Saturday and uh we would sit with them and it was more like a club for them due to various activities with them and uh and we would encourage them with the education so basically public speaking and just giving them a platform so that they could come out and tell us what the issues was what their problems were so that's how we went forward you know and this was such a success story that um in fact I can share with you the case studies and uh you know and what the children are doing today in fact one of my kid is with me as a part of my CSR team and she's doing extremely well wonderful she's one of my uh facilitators a very bright child she went through her college that she joined as an intern so you know these successes is what gave us the strength to work with a government School well most of the most of them they were in a government School so uh this is how and then the vision of our managing director you know he felt that digital is what the children need right you know if you really want to get into an activity there are lots of organizations doing lots of other things but being a computer company the way we understand digital you know and the need for digital but the coming generation so that's how we started the Nugent digital Discovery we adopted two schools near our office in Okla okay and we have 3 000 children so the classes is a secondary school classic seventh and 8th we set up Labs we set up two Labs state of the Art Labs and we did everything possible the best bandwidth and we actually started with iPads okay because iPads were the best kind of devices available at that time you know we use a lot of tablets but only it was like that a lot of people said why are you using iPads but we wanted to give them the best technology so we would conduct their classes in the school and that we had a proper timetable because this was you know this is the mou has to be signed with the government for adopting the school so it is a process but it's worth it so not these some of our these children because not from 2006 practically we have been uh sorry 2016. okay 15 16. yeah we have been we have adopted the schools so not these children are in class 9 10th 11th 12th and they have finished the digital literacy part like yeah ninth because they're too busy we cannot do the classes so this is how it's more interesting and more relevant actually we take the syllabus as the bottom so we like we will do okay class sixth what are they studying they are doing environment okay so we'll make a PPT of environment we'll show them AVS so the the classes are very fun-filled you know it is not a regular class like in a school so when the watch AVS and there's a quiz there's a discussion on the topic and then it's not just environment like you know if they will talk about different issues and environment today they know about global warming so we would be introduced the topics which are which are you know which are very relevant to today's situation so that they can take back something otherwise everything is there in the textbook true it's not textbook education it's basically creating awareness making the making the education so interesting that they go back and they start studying and they really develop an interest in the school in the subjects basically so we basically tackled science and social studies environmental science and all that and the children have done very well and now we have a News Leader so every morning there's a newsletter because we thought the current affairs are also very important so we have a news reader program and we have one child who who says okay I'm the one so we have two International and three domestic news so proper like a TV thing they read the news and then the children prepare their own quiz they do a quiz so this is for public speaking and increasing the level of confidence and participation so it's very holistic so every session is like it's it's like children don't want that they'll love the class in school but what happened was during the covet we couldn't go to the school s were shut but fortunately just before the schools closed we had formed our alumni with the students of 9th 10th 11th 12th because we thought we should still hand hold them you know for a little more time that they're digital and as digital literacy helping them finally like have they just closed the chapter in their life and moved on or are they really utilizing those skills because now everybody has a smart call at home yes so that was the time when during the covet we decided let's do start online classes so during the covet we had about more than 400 students doing online classes and uh what we started doing was we started just Distributing Samsung tablets okay with Sims and every month we recharge like whenever the recharges do we recharge it for them so making them you know so that they don't lose track with this education and then you know they live in these small houses they do not have any facilities they were missing out on the education because uh the student the classes are you know how the classes are held in school it was all on WhatsApp and how can you teach a child on WhatsApp that's simple so at least they had a device on which they could do research they could you know they could even open that get their textbooks because all the ncrt books are all available online so it really made an impact you know and what we did was gradually we started integrating class 8th and seventh also okay because a lot of these children were in um in villages also yeah and then so now we have distributed about more than thousand tablets my current um count is 1080. and we still have you know we still have them like we're again starting the distribution now in once the exams get over so now we are targeting six also for Distributing the tablet so we can begin a session with them so uh every afternoon at 2 30 we of course now we follow the hybrid model we are in school also in the mornings we have a particular timetable we have a lab we have started our labs in the afternoon we have these on we continue with our online classes the way did we did during the period so that is actually adding a another you know for the children is to become more like a remedial class it's a there's a lot of revision like now they're having exams so we are revising with them you know so we it's all through ppts and other visuals Mrs so now the revision is going to be through a quiz so there are three chapters they make a nice quiz and they kind of do it with the children and it becomes like a revision then we have groups like we have the alumni grow then we have for the class eight we have a growth times we have a group and both the schools are together like it's not done separately because we only have and it's a longer session so the afternoon sessions are very beneficial because these are longer sessions we have more time to be with the children so we do different kind of activities with them you know and our news reading continues news reading is extremely interesting activity then also to encourage them um uh we ask them to do research okay you know like we have a debate on nationalism and you should have seen the kind of material they pulled out so it was all they go back they do research and they pull up it and they spoke so beautifully that the our volunteers were stunned you know something like the debate was are we really nationalistic and one child says of course we are nationalistic look at covert what happened our local country came together and we followed all the rules that were being told by the government the health officials so we are nationalistic another child says we are you know there are a lot of people becoming entrepreneurs and giving back to the country something I had never thought of um you know I always thought entrepreneurship is for doing business your personal business but the way she put it together she said no it's but look you're giving back to your own country your manufacturing something in the country so you see all these things are coming from the way they are taught hmm so when they're talking about pollution this they spoke about the Ukraine war the kind of pollution Ukraine was created so you know the children of class sixth seventh eighth and of course the alumni they're being exposed to a worldview and we have a lot of children who have sat for the cuat okay they're still getting admissions we had about 40 kids we were doing career counseling with serious career counseling that they were coming to office also in the afternoons and sitting with these girls and they were working with them and are also our targeted constant classes are very critical in the aluminum okay so you have career counseling as well all right very serious stereotypes every carrier We Touch and we don't talk about being doctors Engineers only we talked about all the related fields like paramedical physiotherapy you know so and skill development so that each one of these girls when they come out it can be Beauty it can be fashion for providing the tablets and also the skill development and the this these kind of curriculum also are you uh in some kind of partnership with teachers yes so I'll come to that covet actually has spoiled a lot of our stuff that we were doing to all our content is created in-house because it's all customized okay so every presentation that is done in the afternoon is previewed in the morning okay but the person who's going to conduct the presentation the team sits together and we do a lot of teamwork so my facilitators are highly qualified they and they're very passionate about what they're doing so the content is created by them the delivery is done by them the tablets is from my CSR budget that's how I've been able to provide a thousand plus tablet so far and we do have implementation Partners but my I have an implementation Partners to work in the remote areas okay see I cannot take my project although it's online and I'm trying to now to get into other places other than Delhi you know like being online we have such a huge Advantage okay so ma'am right now you are focusing only on Delhi NCR or are there any other job we are doing other things that's what I'm saying to focus on the Interiors of the country we work with for the midday meal program that's a huge program for us they are because they can go into Interiors so they come and ask us not Delhi we do like mathura we do vrindavan so wherever there is the need in Rajasthan Assam okay this small small villages for which there are corporates you don't want to fund so they always come back to us and they say we need for these 10 000 kids we need so uh you know we are helping them out and we are spending a large amount of money in fact I'll share the pie chart with you later I'll ask Pasha to send it to you sure you can see what we are spending on education what we're spending on nutrition and personality development again I have I have a expert agency we have an agency I am the young girls again and they they're used to working with government schools so they are doing these life skill training program okay so the new program that got started in April is self-development and self-motivation because we want the children to be confident now we don't want to spoon feed them constantly and how long can we do it see once they're out of school once in six months you know so this self-development and self motivation program is starting from class sixth now so different modules yeah different modules for Classics to it and then from 9 to 12 different modules so it's like a very holistic kind of a program so another I have another partner Kushi okay so she they add into education primary school education what we've done is we have taken two schools in uh the taken and uh our uh these are our freedom schools because this being a secondary school these children are from there from first to fifth and then they come join our school in classics so we are touching them through cushy we have invested in their primary schools they they use their own learning thing it's basically funding pushy and of course we keep getting a regular feedback and they understand what we want to do with the children so they've set up a computer lab and but they it's their content then because we don't want to deal with smaller kids right now okay and again Khushi has gone into the Interiors and it's working like in ramgarh there were floods and there was Devastation they came to us and said we want to rebuild these small schools in The Villages so in fact right now two schools are being rebuilt what they did last year was different because after all that that happened that's damage control but now they're actually so we are sponsoring through kushti other than Delhi we are again moving into the Interiors we have adopted a school in Chennai again you know they really needed funds so Kushi identifies and they tell us ma'am we need so I'm not pushing them wherever the requirement is comes to us and tells us we are adopting this ma'am would you like to adopt would you like to adopt and we give up so uh so for us for us the main thing is that every penny should go to the beneficial you know the whole uh our whole program is designed in such a way that we do not waste our resources we are not doing CSR for the sake of CSR or for our branding we have enough others our products you know we are a software company and it's uh it's a very good company so they're doing their own branding the marketing team in fact I was a part of the marketing team when I joined new job okay so we are doing our own branding this I have taken over the CSR I took over only in 2015 but I'm still a part of the marketing team and the corporate communication so but my rcsr is only to make an impact and we are making an impact you know the way the children react if you read some of the case studies I've just got my annual report which I'm going to print out and I'll definitely send you a copy or a pdf version you have to see the case studies how the children's lives have changed you know something we found we find very simple in our lives because we are so privileged we don't think it's anything critical having a device in our hand or having a mobile in our hand but for them it has changed it has been a life-changing experience and not only them the even the siblings but you are using for their studies then mothers were using okay the neighbors there are girls who are mimicking our model you know girls are very a love be you love being teachers yes if you ask when we do a when we do a survey for career counseling and we say what what career do you want majority will say teachers so they run in the in the neighborhood they have these four five children coming to them and they're teaching them the same way as we teach them so you can see the multiplier effect yes out of the families how the parents attitude towards their daughters have changed parents who didn't want their daughters to study now you know when they look at the daughters and the way they are grooming themselves they realize that education is what what everybody needs in this country true true mom I'll tell you something very interesting which I which I've actually mentioned also in one of my interviews you know the you know being an economic student I can tell you the great Green Revolution change the agriculture sector in this country so earlier we used to import wheat because I'm that generation where we had to import wheat we do not enough grains in the country great revolution has brought about food security today we were able to help during the covet you know the free rations which are they are still contributed it's only because we have such a large stock of grains so Green Revolution led to this it came in the early 70s and you didn't see how it has transformed the country I feel very strongly that the same thing will happen with the digital education because with digital education you can reach the remotest part of the country and you know a lot of these girls the schools are very far away after a certain age the mothers don't let their parents don't let them go to schools which are three for walk three four kilometers away at least if they have a device in their hand and if they have online classes going on for them that is my dream that you know I can connect so well because everybody has a phone every you know with all our new Telecom sector with the new technology and the great technology is Galloping today even Villages most people have phones in their houses so at least they have some Wi-Fi facility some network if not not Wi-Fi but at least some Network so uh this is going to be an it's an amazing opportunity you know for me it has come as a surprise that's wonderful you know because I and for us it was like okay let's make these children inquisite let them get more interested in the education that was the whole idea when we started this program that let them go back to their schools take interest in their subjects and the teachers have started telling us that the children are so confident even if they know the wrong answer the answer is not correct they want to stand up and answer they've gain a lot of confidence they have gained a lot of you know confidence and self-worth so and they can do something within this the projects have actually enhanced not just their competencies but their confidence and skill levels yes the competency of digital is not a very big thing because you can learn it in a week's time yes yes yes you know and they're all used to devices today so for them a tablet is not a big thing however ma'am I feel like there must have been certain challenges at least initially when you started implementing your projects so if you can you know shed some light on those challenges especially in this domain of digital learning yeah I can tell you one thing that happened with us when we went to school and we set up the labs so you know the school timetables the the children only the classes are from 7 to 12 30. um

and each class is 30 minutes so initially when we went it was not so structured so we used to get about say 70 minutes we would Club two classes at 10. oh now with the school timetable we don't get enough time to be with them in the computer lab and uh the other thing is there too many holidays in the school teachers are there some of the teachers are very cooperative but because there is so much pressure on the teachers each class we used to have 90 children you know and they were sitting on the floor so when I first entered it was November it was it was scolded like you know Delhi gets cold in November they were sitting on mats with their bags with their bottles everything on the floor at a classroom that was meant for 60 had 90 children so it was very disturbing so the first thing we did was we furnished all the classrooms okay we bought this and benches now of course the government is providing everything so class sixth seventh and eighth was completely furnished before we even set up our lab we did that you know and of course now the classes have become uh smaller um because now they're about 60 but still not their new admissions again but uh ruchika the best part in the whole thing is is our online now so whatever we're not able to achieve during the daytime in the school we are able to achieve in the afternoon so this online isn't I and the hybrid model because you meet the children in the school yes I always feel when you are in front of them you know they also feel very happy coming back to school and screen you know watching the ppts and they're physically reading the news now earlier it was all online happy that they're able to do all that you know the physical interaction with the teachers then we are able to give them some we carry some juices and biscuits for them okay so you know and they give them prices we continuously we keep a lot of pencils and erasers and sharpeners a good answer okay on the spot we give so we are programmed we give a lot of price results yeah it's a great incentive for the students yes and they are so happy you know it is it is so amazing to see these children you don't really give them something big it was a small thing like a pencil you know in the class okay excellent answer here's your pencil so ma'am do you have any specific engagement tools for the teachers also for their attention and also to improve their quality yes so my facilitators have to carry a lesson plan to the school and the teachers otherwise the teachers we have we have created a group called Summer shikshits okay which we created before the covet but because of covet we couldn't really meet the teachers and the teachers were also kind of you know the WhatsApp thing and teaching they were so bogged down by being at home and managing their family so I don't blame them but now the teachers and the principals have started participating so when we have our debate they come and they because they become a judge we have a mother session online mother session where the mothers come so this time we had some 400 plus mothers online we had an online sessions with the mothers okay so the mothers came and with the children and we showed them everything that the children have done during the year in every class how many topics we have covered and we told them how you should help your child to take care of the devices because a lot of devices get broken also only their children and their siblings are kind of fighting over the they're one device so they're all fighting which is fine and uh people to encourage the child to use the device the right way and we had a quiz for the mothers and for participation we gave them a small gift he also did happiness kids during the government okay yeah yeah so uh because you know they are the vicinity of the office so all covered protocol then they were saved is so we give them gave them happiness kids this concept we took from Akshay Patra because Akshay Patra could do the midday meals so they were using the funds to give happiness kids to everybody so that we did with the children and it's like you know like we become one big large family now so it's actually very engaging for the parent Community also yes who are attending sessions with the children but were there any hiccups earlier you know when you started were there any uh problems as related to awareness awareness building there was there was a lot of problems with awareness building and that is why all these public speaking Health there and these prices helped because the children didn't want to talk even they knew something they were resistant you know because they were seeing they were seeing a very different kind of the facilitators at the young girls um so they were you know they were not used to strangers coming and uh so those things were there but it you know but because we are quite we are so customized like we we watched the children so we had a group of slow Learners so we created a separate section for them this was before the covert we would have winter camps with them to bring them up to the level summer camps winter camps we would do plays we would do projects you know it was more like a club that they would come okay you have a break for attendance one week is our winter time we did different activities with them and with the slow learners we really worked very well foreign so those were definitely the challenges but I didn't see any major challenge but the children were so enthusiastic it's just amazing you know you have to come and witness one of the sessions and then you will realize for sure they're better than public school kids wow because for them they don't take things for granted that's an amazing accomplishment so Mom how do you monitor the impact of these projects especially on the students coming to do you follow certain criteria or any benchmarks yeah we do so this time we had a third party uh doing the impact report so they interviewed the students they did their own analysis I'll share the report with you once it's out and they spoke to the teachers they spoke to the parents they did proper but we were doing it earlier also and we have created a lot of case studies before and after he had a regular feedback every month from the students so every at the end of the month every child has to give a feedback like we have five questions some are about the session some are about so uh like uh for this for last month uh we have we have taken the device as the focus point and we have said how how much time are you spending on the device because we want information on that for ourselves and uh what are you doing with your device are you doing more research how many people are working on your device what you are doing in the class are you going back and sharing with your parents you know are you creating awareness in your community um and like they have their personality development uh program so which are the programs they would uh they want what are the subjects they want to study so like last time they told us please revise our exams are coming and these are the topics so children will give the topics it's in-depth feedback so we do what the children want us so they will say man this is the topic that our teacher is teaching like French Revolution we have not understood then we revise it with you we've already done it once okay we'll do it again it's very critical in the exam so it's all customized but as per the class and we have enough time during the afternoon to be with them and to explain things to them and we have attendance sometimes of 200 kids at us for a single session because it's such a huge value addition to their uh yes yes it's a huge value addition I I feel at least the children are getting interested in the subject so one kid told me she said you know I hated this particular subject and now it's my favorite subject wow it's it's how and should I never forget the way it's being taught because you know the PPT they can just refer to them and the whole revision is done I wish the other corporates also follow your league because I really wish we could replicate this Market yeah so ma'am on that note my last question to you would be what are your thoughts on the current uh CSR efforts in the education industry like you are looking at a holistic development of the child and there are many many corporates who are just you know just sending funds and uh they are not really you know making such efforts so what are your thoughts see musician is a software coming from India you know we are one of the few software companies you know there's a lot of difference between a service company and a software company right we develop our own software so it's a lot of r d it's 30 years of music and uh from the scratch we work from the scratch so that was the concept that we adopted for our own CSR project but it's a tough Journey we are used to tough work so it's for us it was like something we had to do we had to do it we had to do it properly other CSR they're doing some very good work also but I wouldn't say in the education so you need all kinds of people you know you just don't need one kind see we are trying to fill the gap which is lacking in the education the way education is designed in our country today but there are other people who are doing like midday meals so many companies are sponsoring that midday meal is so fantastic with their children coming hungry to school you know my repo impact report that has been done recently says 40 children come without eating there are you know so even that you have to be like I'm giving funds to Akshay Patra but then if you if you're doing things properly and you are aware of the needs of the nation there are poor country so we have to fix the person absolutely at the bottom of the ladder because we have the policies in place we have this shiksha abhiyan we have the right to Education Act also and now the the new education policy also so up it's uh how it's implemented see most of the things are dead but the person who's there at the ground level you know yeah they know the reality right they know the real and they are the ones if the government design policies they can make the best things that they feel um but um and uh the policies some of the policies are very good I would say like the CSR gave us such a huge opportunity my program became an ndtp with three thousand kids it's only because of CSR mandate I have two percentage and I'm so happy I have that two percent profit today so we really want to do and I'm sure there are like you see in the South you see premji Foundation a very fantastic work they're doing some fantastic work so I feel the policies are and now they're widening the policies they're making things better some of the things are very good that the funds have to be utilized in that year because all lots of a lot of ngos we were supporting who were not able to utilize so you know like okay next we'll carry it forward next year they did that but now that the utility has to be done you have to utilize that fund it's adding a great deal of value for the projects it is you know you know so I think the policies what they're reworking they're doing a pretty good job policies are perfect for CSI and uh they really open give you a lot of opportunities to work and do things but like I again said that it depends on how you are taking it forward and how you implemented it right you know thank you so much ma'am that is very very insightful and enthralling and we have learned so many things from you that we need to you know take up projects and actually you know do things from our heart yes I'm passionate about passionate I'm a very highly qualified uh Team you know like sometimes I think they're over qualified but the passion is you know but what they have the passion they have you have to just see them how they are every every session is critical to them you know so that's how the impact is coming wow yeah thankful to you for giving us this opportunity thank you so much for joining us thanks so much for talking to you yeah lovely talking to you too thank you okay

2022-11-12 10:12

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