Professional Documents
Culture Documents
re-HS 514
re-HS 514
The Education portfolio supports civil societys efforts in the areas of elementary education,
adolescent education, child protection and the education of adult women. The Trusts work in the
field entails:
The support of state-run schools in order to improve the quality of education and
facilitate easy access to marginalized communities.
The Trusts approach is based on Education for All, and does not support projects where
children are excluded or discriminated on the basis of competency tests.
Areas of Engagement
Elementary Education
Adolescent Education
Womens Education
1.1
Elementary educations
Child-centric education
People participation
Enabling cooperation
The Trusts support a number of projects that facilitate easier access to and a higher quality of
education across the country. The projects have the following areas of focus in common:
Child-centric pedagogy
Partner NGOs constantly track student attendance to maintain a high retention rate. Additionally,
the Trusts also support the enrolment and education of children from deprived communities and
those with disabilities. This includes, creating a supportive growth environment with better
learning and creative opportunities for children in schools. Collaborative initiatives with state
agencies are also encouraged to further the impact and quality of programmes.
Keeping in mind, the severe shortage of quality professionals, the Trusts also support a number
of resource organizations that engage in training programmes for teachers or the improvement of
pedagogy. Many of them have been encouraged to evolve into teacher training institutions.
Resource partners have also engaged with children to provide high-quality, subject-specific
inputs in science and language teaching-learning as well as accelerated learning methodologies.
The Trusts encourage activities and institutions, which employ modern, multi-disciplinary
academic programmes for teacher education; ones that are responsive to a childs learning needs
and environment.
1.2
In the past, the Trusts have supported several productive projects aimed at diverse aspects of
child welfare. These initiatives have ranged from the promotion of education and a better
understanding of child-related laws to the launch of helpline services. The Trusts are currently
evolving the focus of future initiatives so as to build on past partner achievements, while being
in consonance with emerging opportunities.
1.3
Adolescent Education
The Trusts believe that it is critical to create opportunities for young people to realise their
potential, as individuals and community leaders. Committed to the task of nation building, the
Trusts have invested in creative and talented youth as agents of social change and development.
Supported projects have demonstrated the effective role of the youth in developmental processes.
The focus is on educationally backward areas mainly Dalit, tribal and minority communities
with equal attention to both genders. These projects are based on the Doosra Dashak model
developed in Rajasthan with the support of the Trusts, and include specially developed strategies
for education, life skills and citizenship. The basic activities include:
Community-integrated work
The Trusts have also supported projects to promote skill development, leading to
entrepreneurship and improved employment opportunities for the youth. This comprised a
residential course model, which was based on a comprehensive package of activities like
completion of secondary education, life skills, vocational training and personality development.
1.4
Womens education
Education is a tool that empowers women with the analytical abilities to address problems within
their environment. It is especially key to the development of backward communities such as the
rural, urban poor, displaced, migrants, minorities and Dalits. It can empower individuals with the
skills to take charge of their environment and deal with systems, without having to depend on
others to conduct their negotiations. Given the feasibility and easy reach, the Trusts have
developed educational programmes for women who are organized in Self Help Groups or
Sangathans. A new generation of literacy methodologies, devised by Trust-supported NGOs, are
already showing successful outcomes. While the approach is based on the acknowledgement of
the intrinsic value of literacy; the curriculum has been technically standardized to help the
women to access education at their doorstep. The highlights of the approach are:
Needs based
The efforts are towards sustaining literacy and its application in the real-life context of women
Programmes
2.1
Adolescent education
2.2
Doosra Dashak
for
the
survival
and
development
of
economically
backward
other parts of the country. This is essentially due to the contextual variations in its core strategies
and basic approach. It is being implemented in nine blocks of seven districts in Rajasthan. The
Trusts also support 20 more projects in eight states based on the Doosra Dashak framework.
2.3
Interactive learning
Tata ClassEdge is an integrated learning solution for schools, designed to help teachers deliver
high quality instruction with an effective blend of classroom activities and interactive
multimedia.
Tata Interactive Systems brings about the most contemporary solutions in education. These
products are designed keeping in mind the needs of modern education. Most of the products
make use of state-of-the-art technology and foster collaborative learning.
While several government initiatives are underway to address this problem it would take millions
of teachers and decades of education before India could achieve 80-90 per cent literacy through
traditional teaching methods. The situation calls for an out-of-the-box solution, and that is
exactly what Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) came up with in 2000, when they first
experimented with the Computer Based Functional Literacy (CBFL) programme in Beeramguda
village in Medak district of Andhra Pradesh.
Based on the Baldrige Education Excellence Model, the programme is similar in many ways to
the TBEM assessments that Tata companies go through. Teachers and principals undergo training
to become assessors, who assess schools participating in the programme, once a year. Forty
schools currently benefit from this programme, covering 2,500 teachers and 100,000 students
from the ICSE, CBSE and other examination boards. The TEEP is unique in that it is run by a
private institution rather than by the government. Tata Steel has set up a special committee to
oversee and govern this initiative, and all resources are disbursed by the company.
2.5
Another key Tata Steel education initiative Education Quality Improvement Project (EQUIP)
was introduced in 2010 to focus on the core value of Management by Fact. Team-based
EQUIPs involve the participation of teachers and students. Projects are classified into three
categories: improvement through problem solving, where the emphasis is on diagnosis of the
problem and remedial action; improvement through executing a task, where the solution to the
problem is known and the emphasis is on approaches used by the team; and improvement
through innovation.
In all, 50 EQUIPs were submitted by 20 schools in the year it was introduced. Within a year,
EQUIP has already made an impact: four of its projects were recognised during the TEEP Award
Function in February 2011.
2.5
Nearly 3-5 per cent of children suffer from deceases like dyslexia and dysgraphia, finding it
difficult to cope with studies. In 2002, Tata Interactive Systems (TIS) took up support of the LD
community as part of its corporate sustainability programme, supporting various means to ensure
that students with LD get their rightful place in the educational system and rediscover the joys of
learning. Tackling learning disabilities,
Later, the company established the annual Tata Learning Disability Forum (TLDF), the first
platform in India for creating awareness about LD in children and sharing and learning from
reputed international and Indian LD experts. Students, teachers, parents and experts from the
field of education as well as government officials attend this annual one-day interactive seminar
and come together in a unique initiative to give impetus to this cause.
3
The first step in this direction was taken by the Founder himself with the establishment of the JN
Tata Endowment Scholarship in 1892, which provided loans to talented Indian youth to pursue
an education abroad. Among the many luminaries who have benefited from this scholarship are
KR Narayanan, former President of India and Raja Ramanna, former director of the Bhabha
Atomic Research Centre.
Set up along the same lines, the Lady Meherbai D Tata scholarships, established in 1932,
offer support to young Indian women graduates pursuing higher studies abroad in the
Travel grants are provided to the students proceeding for post-graduate and doctoral studies and
for professionals proceeding for their mid-career programmes or to attend relevant and
meaningful seminars and conferences abroad.A travel grant application can be made with the
following documents: A written application, a resume, Statement of purpose, confirmed
admission letter, letter of invitation, mode of presentation, recent pay slips
4.
Educational institutes
The Sir Dorabji Tata Trust and the Allied Trusts have pioneered several leading institutions. In
the process, these centres of excellence have made significant contributions to several fields,
particularly medicine, science and education.
As financial aid to NGOs is usually given for enabling them to implement a specific project, it
has a discernible and concrete impact of limited magnitude and sweep. However, grants made to
the institutions have a longer time frame and a wider canvas of impact.
Even though, the daily administration of most of these institutions has now been handed over to
the respective state or central governments, the Trusts continue to support and nurture them in
myriad ways. For instance, via programme and recurring grants for specific purposes.
Table List of supported institutes
Sr. No.
Name of Institutes
Location
Web-Link
1.
Bangalore
www.iisc.ernet.in
2.
Mumbai
www.tiss.edu
3.
Mumbai
www.tifr.res.in
4.
Mumbai
www.ncpamumbai.com
5.
Bangalore
www.nias.res.in