In January, we represented LIFI at Gandhi Ashram in Wardha for a conclave on “Multilingual education (MLE)”. The conference was organised as part of the collective efforts of Unnati and Patang and LIFI being one of the members of the MLE collective. The idea of being a part of such a collective is to understand and even share best practices with regards to language inclusion and giving importance to regional languages. As LIFI scales and works in remote geographies, it will be important for us to build our appetite to work in contexts where children speak languages that do not sometimes even have a written script. Such conferences are helping us learn about the best pedagogical practices that promote language inclusion. 

Our Consultant from Atma Accelerator  - Parul Agarwal visited us in Purkhas Rathi, Haryana. Here's what Parul has to say about her visit:

"When asked if the children were in a mood to learn today, a group of children raised both their hands to show their excitement to study and learn. 

Wondering what's the catch here? - Two years back, the same group of children dropped out of school due to the pandemic and had no access to learning. Fast forward to now,  they come to this learning centre showing excitement to learn everyday. 

LIFI is building this excitement amongst the children by bridging the learning gap and making education fun."

Our team member, Neha Arora facilitated 2 days of training with Government teachers and YTLs of 6 schools where LIFI is currently piloting its Fellowship intervention in collaboration with Vichar Samiti (our partners). 

The idea with these trainings is to ensure retention of our children within schools, equipping the existing Teachers with the knowledge and resources to enhance the learning outcomes in the children, in addition to our YTLs  making efforts in the schools.

LIFI was invited to talk and represent at the Azim Premji Enterprise Mela. We were one of the 15 organisations they had invited to inspire their students and the larger development sector professionals. We are grateful to Azim Premji University for the opportunity and we look forward to engaging with them in the near future too. 

February month was when we conducted our end of year assessments with children. It gives us happiness to share that we saw an overall increment of 56% in Hindi and 52% in Math learning outcomes, which indicates a 2 year growth in our children (in both language and numeracy). 

For the detailed report on the assessments, please refer here. 

LIFI is humbled to be partners with Save the Children India (STCI). As part of this collaboration, LIFI directly is training 20 youth volunteers of STCI (Rajasthan) who work in the non-formal education centres of STCI in the remote areas of Rajasthan. 

LIFI has done 5 online sessions so far and did a residential training in Beawar where all the volunteers and the leadership team of STCI came together. The sessions catered to decoding literacy and numeracy in greater depth and for the volunteers to get a better hold of the complete teaching-learning cycle (planning, execution, assessment and reflection). We are all set for another round of training with the STCI team in the month of April - this time also doing ground visits, observing the volunteers in action and giving them feedback. 

In Purkhas Rathi, as our children moved beyond grade 5, they demanded computer and english classes from us. Happy to share that we were able to collaborate with Apni Pathshala, an initiative by Malpani Ventures and Selligion Computers for the same. Through their support, we have been able to get 10 computer devices for our children. The children over the last one month are enjoying their brand new learning pod. Kapil, our just graduated YTL will run this on his own with curriculum and training support from our end. 

We supported one of our other community champions in Kirari, Delhi by setting up the same pod with another 10 computers. Grateful to Malpani Ventures and Selligion Computers for the same! 

Our YTLs across all the communities did EOY showcases and progress report sharing. 66% of our parents attended these showcase events, where they learnt about the progress of the children and the way forward.