Akanksha Foundation
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Mission Statement
The Akanksha Foundation is a non-profit organisation with a mission to provide children from low-income communities with a high-quality education, enabling them to maximize their potential and transform their lives. Akanksha works in the field of education, initiating school reform through The School Project, and providing a supplemental education through the Akanksha centers. Currently, Akanksha reaches out to over 4600 children through the 15 centers and 15 schools. The School Project is a venture to open high-quality schools serving children from low-income communities in Mumbai and Pune. These schools are in partnership with local municipalities, with the vision of creating small clusters of model schools in these cities that can be used to impact the mainstream education system. Through the centers, a commitment is made to support each child by providing a strong educational foundation, good time, self-esteem and values, and to help them plan how they can earn a steady livelihood.
About This Cause
The Akanksha Foundation: An Overview Founded in 1991, The Akanksha Foundation’s mission is to provide children from low-income communities with a high-quality education, enabling them to maximize their potential and transform their lives. Currently, Akanksha serves 4600 students through 15 schools and 15 after-school centers in Mumbai and Pune. Run under a public-private partnership model with local municipal corporations, The School Project aims to create a model for high-performing schools that redefines what is possible for children from low-income communities to achieve, and that drives wider systemic reform in the Indian educational system. The School Project has been inspired and adapted learning from the success of organizations such as the Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP), the largest charter school network in the United States, and ARK, a network of academy schools in the United Kingdom, both of which have had significant success towards a similar mission in their home countries. National Scenario Educational outcomes in India are dismally low both in absolute terms as well as relative to other countries. The 2013 ASER results show that nationally, 53% of students enrolled in Class 5 are unable to read a Class 2 text. In numeracy, 74 % of students enrolled in Class 5 could not complete a Class 3 division problem. Globally, the relatively well-performing Indian states of Himachal Pradesh and Tamil Nadu ranked at the bottom in the 2009 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) test conducted by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) on language, math and science, ranking only above Kyrgyzstan. The transition from Centres to Schools Akanksha began with a simple idea to give less privileged children a place where they could come and enjoy their childhood. This idea translated into the Center Project, which is a supplementary education model for children from underprivileged communities. The center runs for 2 ½ hours a day, five days a week, with 60 children, 2 teachers and a social worker/education manager supporting it. As Akanksha grew in the Education space, the team realized the need to create greater impact on the lives of the students. This resulted in the launch of the School Project in 2007. Launched by Akanksha in partnership with the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai, Pune and Pimpri Chinchwad, the School Project is a network of high performing schools aimed at redefining what is possible for children from low-income communities and has the potential to drive wider systemic reform. The School Project The Akanksha School Project aims to create a model for high-performing public schools that redefine what is possible for children from low-income communities to achieve, and that serve as learning laboratories that can drive wider systemic reform in the Indian educational system. Akanksha currently runs 15 schools that serve nearly 4,000 students across Mumbai and Pune under a public-private partnership model with local municipal corporations, with plans to establish a national presence within the next five years. Students at Akanksha Schools outperform state schools on both inputs and outcomes. Akanksha achieves high student attendance and annual retention rates (91% and 98% respectively, as compared to public school drop outs as high as 50% post the fifth grade) and high teacher attendance (93%) as compared to a government attendance rate of 75%. On Board Examination results, Akanksha students achieve a 100% pass percentage as compared to a 88% government pass rate, with 77% of Akanksha students achieving a distinction or first class as compared to 61% in the government schools). From its first classes of graduating students, nearly 100% have gone on to college, versus a national college enrollment of around 30%. Akanksha aims to achieve three key goals through its schools: academic achievement, student enrichment, and community development, thereby enabling its students to become independent, responsible citizens but also for the communities to become healthy and nurturing places to live. Because of the constraints that its children face, there are multiple challenges Akanksha experiences in achieving these goals. The highest priority issues are English language acquisition, intervention for students with learning gaps, reading comprehension skills, math and science proficiency, and community issues such as health and sanitation, violence and substance abuse. The Future In 2013, Mumbai passed India’s first Public-Private Partnership (PPP) policy in education, enabling non-profit partners to manage public schools, and giving them access to public funds and resources while holding them accountable to student learning outcomes. There is now overwhelming demand from other governments across India to set up similar PPP policies. Akanksha has been invited by and is in talks with other governments to replicate its model in other geographies. In the next five years, Akanksha plans to manage a network of schools in at least 4 major urban areas of the country with a 10% penetration of all English-medium municipal schools in each city; growing to become a network of approximately 90 schools. It also plans to develop a vehicle through which it codifies and transfers practices with other education providers serving a similar demographic of children – playing a significant role in transforming the quality of public education in India by turning its schools into laboratories of learning.