A few weeks ago, i had met Dr.Balaji Sampath , to understand the ‘Big Picture’ in the Education NGO space in India. It helped me get a lot of clarity on the way forward for Deepam
According to him there are 3 models working well in India, presently
- Asha / Aid ( US Chapter) – Fundraising organisations – they primarily raise money. their impact measured by the number of organisations they support – For example : 200 orgs supported in India in 2009 etc
- Pudiyador / Sukrupa – Centre running orgs – They ensure Kids come to class. They hire teachers or invite volunteer orgs to teach. They are supported by fundraising orgs. Measure of impact – no of kids reached out, improvement in their standards
- Content Orgs – Eureka books / Pratham books – These orgs primarily focus on curriculum . They research on the best content / curriculum and provide this for free / at a low cost to NGO’s
- The 4th type of Organisation – he says are slowly emerging – Deepam is one such. They go out and teach the kids in a focussed way. They can take content from ‘content orgs‘ , go teach at ‘centre running orgs‘ , which are funded byFundraising orgs
According to him, the value that Deepam has created is enormous – So far, the NGO space has been missing “consistency” and “focus” among the volunteer teachers. Someone going to a centre at the alloted time and teach the kids, a specific subject. He says this is quite rare and wanted us to build on what we have created so far.
He says when all 4 of the above is done by 1 organisation in the social sector, everything goes for a toss. Balajihas tried doing all of this in his initial days and failed. Finally, he decided to focus on content and content development.
Anyone here has a better way to segment the Education NGOs in India ? Would love to hear from you.