Learning Initiatives for India (LIFI)

Vision: पढ़ेगा हर बच्चा, बढ़ेगा हर बच्चा (Every Child Thrives): Access, Learn, Retain, Educate

Mission: Collaborating with nonprofits and government systems to create a collective of youth teacher leaders, enabling sustainable learning pathways for children out of the education system.

Core Values: Empowerment, Ownership, Joy, Determination and Reflection

Core Values (Summary):

• Empowerment: Setting structures, processes which enable ALL to feel confident about themselves and take decisions that further our cause and mission.

• Ownership: Finding connections between what we do and why we do it. We don't wait for others to take action but rather take charge of our own learning and be accountable for the result. Our words and actions are aligned and we become the cause.

• Joy: Having a sense of eternal/internal happiness and everybody enjoys freedom of expression, behaviour and emotional commitment leading to work satisfaction. 

• Determination: Our resolve is to keep going and keep figuring out solutions to achieve goals with excellence (even during times of adversity)

• Reflection: Giving and receiving honest feedback, responding more than reacting and learning lessons from what worked and didn't work.

Values in Action

1. Empower

• Giving and accepting constructive feedback keeping in mind the bigger picture in a respectful and a humble way
• Taking independent decisions which help in furthering the cause and the mission (feeling the confidence to be able to do this)
• Showing empathy in situations with everyone
• Having more open conversations at every level and get them to ask questions/share 
• Accepting ALL emotions, conversations, giving a listening ear, helping ALL to be curious

2. Ownership

• Accepting and owning when we are not able to give our best
• Acknowledge others’ efforts
• Being fully aware of my role and what I am doing
• Stepping up during times of adversity
• Having the courage to speak up when things are not right or acknowledge the good things that are happening

3. Joy

• Creating a safe space for children to enjoy learning
• Supporting each other in different tasks both big and small
• Encouraging creativity
• Celebrating small success
• Respect for each other, even in the time of conflict. 
• Creating a welcoming and fun environment for everyone

4. Determination

• Taking risks 
• Meet the timelines towards our goals
• Always be ready to improve
• Looking at adversity as an opportunity and keeping a solution-oriented mindset
• Not giving up

5. Reflection

• Creating some space in team meetings for everyone to reflect together
• Learning from our mistakes and successes
• Connecting our day to day work with our larger vision

My primary responsibilities include:

Vision Setting and Organization Strategy

• Setting the organization’s vision and the long-term strategy

• Designing the organisational strategy for program, impact, recruitment and development

Program Design, Monitoring and Evaluation

• Conceptualising and designing interventions of the organization

• Designing Impact evaluation metrics for current and future projects

• Monitoring the program and doing on-ground quality checks via periodic field visits 

• Personally meeting the beneficiaries and understanding their needs to enhance the quality of the program

• Planning and enabling professional development of team members

• Networking with different stakeholders for collaboration, engagement & support

Partnerships and Fundraising

• Formulating partnerships with other grassroots organisations and individuals working with out-of school-children

• Raising funds for current and new projects

LIFI is at a stage where my role requires me to think more expansively about collaborations and exchanges with external stakeholders. 

We will have completed three years of operation soon and in our work so far, we have prioritised effective division of roles and accountability structures for everyone in the organisation. This makes me well positioned to spend time on the LEAP Project. 

One of my priority roles in the organization is also to innovate our curricula to serve the diverse needs of children who are pushed out of the education system. This is to ensure that we bring these children on the paths of better educational pursuits. The partnership with LEAP Fellows is well aligned to my role and will help me gain better perspectives and push the bar of excellence for us at LIFI.

A hybrid (online and offline) support model to local Youth enabling mainstreaming and retention of children in the education system.

150 million children (one in three) are pushed out of the education system in India, denying them access to basic rights.  The major barriers children face just to be in school are poverty,  child labour, disabilities, civil strife, lack of infrastructure, reverse migration, harmful gender norms, and discrimination.

There is a huge gap in awareness among marginalised communities and implementation of government policies meant to ensure that children irrespective of their socio-economic backgrounds, caste, genders and abilities get access to equal educational opportunities. 

COVID -19 has added to the inequity as nationally there is a 7% dip in the learning levels of children posing serious threat to their educational continuity.

Through a two-year paid fellowship programme called LeAd UR India Fellowship, we coach local youth from the same underserved contexts to become advocates to support children who are either out of the education system or at risk of dropping out, ensuring that no child is left behind.

We offer a hybrid (online and offline) support model for the local youth to become teacher leaders for children in their own communities. These local youth teacher leaders (YTLs) access curricula that is designed by LIFI to cater to the foundational literacy and numeracy skills of the children in the age groups of 6 to 12 years. The daily objectives are all broken and aligned to the national and state board outcomes and cater to the different learning styles of the children as well as the YTLs. The curricula comprises of: daily audio and written lesson plans for the YTLs:

1. Aligned Kinesthetic activities using local household materials such as mud, pebbles, and other such easily available resources 

2. Daily worksheets for children to practise and master the outcomes 

The blended support to the YTLs is given in the form of:

1. More than 50 hours of online training to help YTLs catering to content, enhancing their teaching and leadership skills 

2. Once a month, in-person support to observe their classroom practices and give constructive feedback

The unique selling proposition of the Fellowship is that we onboard existing organisations interested in implementing our model in their own communities.  This is to build a collective of supporting ecosystems for children wherever they are in the country.

We have carried out the following each year:

1. Baseline, midline and endline assessments with our students that have shown progress in their foundational learning outcomes each year. 

In 2020-21, we saw a 24% and 22% improvement in the learning outcomes in Hindi and Math respectively. 

In 2021-22, there was an average improvement of 50% in Hindi and 56% in Math. 

In 2022-23 year, the improvement was 56% and 52% in Hindi and Math, respectively. 

2. Surveys with our YTLs at the beginning and at the end of the year capturing their understanding of the teaching-learning cycle (effective planning, execution, assessment and reflection) and content understanding pertaining to foundational literacy and numeracy skills. 

3. Interviews with students, their parents and other stakeholders to gauge the effectiveness of our programs.

Through LeAD UR India Fellowship, we have worked with 567 children across Haryana, MP and UP through 24 YTLs and 3 non-profits. 85% of these children have gone back to school with regular attendance and have shown an average increase of 56% in Hindi (literacy) and 52% in Math learning outcomes, respectively indicating a two grade-level jump. 

The YTLs average attendance in our trainings has been 81% and 100% of them want to remain in the education sector working directly with children. 

Ever since we started in 2020, our student curriculum has gone through iterations to increase the outcomes on the ground. The following has been the improvements:

• In 2020, during the pandemic times, we started off with audio lessons only for children (ages 6 to 12). The audio lessons had instructions for children to perform kinesthetic activities and then for the worksheets aligned with the objectives for each day. The YTLs would listen to the clips with the children and would facilitate the lessons with the children in small groups in their own homes. We leveraged online trainings for our YTLs which were more than 100 hours this year. 

• In 2021, we added audios for the YTLs which were instructions for them to conduct everyday lessons with the children. We removed audio lessons for children of ages 6 to 7 (grades 1 and 2), and included audios only for the children of higher grades (3, 4 and 5). This was a conscious call as we felt that children in grades 1 and 2 did not respond to just the audio recordings effectively but children in grades 3, 4 and 5 could be encouraged for self-learning with the audios. For this year too, we leveraged online trainings for our YTLs which were more than 100 hours.

• In 2022, we added written lesson plans in addition to the audios to support the YTLs with details on how they could execute the lessons. Our trainings became a blend of both online more than 50 hours) and on-the- ground training, observation and feedback.

We have finished three academic sessions, having started LIFI right in the middle of the first wave pandemic in 2020. What got started as a small project in the pandemic year is now an evolved organisation. We have strengthened and innovated our programs and support for the children each year. Receiving validations on our solution being part of the LEAP Project will enable us to gain better partnerships with other organisations that are in need of such curriculum for children in their contexts. 

LIFI’s biggest focus is to build a thriving collective of local youth teacher leaders along with other nonprofits and Government bodies, for children who are pushed out of the education system. The engagement in the LEAP project will not only help us reflect on our approach to solving one of India's toughest challenges in the education system but also help us further scale our work with better conviction and evidence. It will help us strategize better for the next 3 to 5 years.  

We are also currently in the process of diversifying our donor-base (both nationally and internationally). Being a 100% donors-driven organisation, the research study will help our donors trust the programs and the solution better, which will help us in getting more funds.

1. Can local youth, when provided with a customised and a blended mentorship support (both online and offline) to work with children (with varying needs)  enable better learning outcomes for children in underserved contexts - at par with in-service teachers in under-resourced schools of the same regions?

2. Are partnerships (and collective building on a cost-sharing basis with non-profits and Government bodies) the best way forward to fight India’s toughest education sector challenge - ensuring mainstreaming and retention of children in schools?

3. Is LIFI better equipped to adapt to a pandemic-like situation and can we still ensure dedicated support to children and the local youth teachers?

Foundational Research: 

We would like the following:

• Best practices from successful organisations that leverage local youth to teach children in their own communities, including how they support the children, how their practices to train and mentor their teachers have evolved or changed post the pandemic 

• What other innovations/best practices can LIFI think of to ensure better support for their children, moving forward? 

• Evidence of any other “partnerships-focussed” organisations and how they are creating an impact. What does LIFI need to do to get there? 

Formative Research: 

• How has LIFI impacted their current set of children? What is different now in the lives of the children as compared to their lives prior to LIFI’s intervention? 

• How are partnerships working for LIFI? Are we seeing the same or different outcomes when working with partner organisations? 

• How has LIFI impacted the lives of the local youth teachers? Do they feel better prepared to work full-time in the education sector post the Fellowship Program?

Summative Research:

• What best practices is LIFI taking into account to work with children and local youth teachers in a post-pandemic world? What is missing? 

• How is LIFI’s work different from organisations that are focused towards collective-building through collaborations? 

• How has LIFI evolved as an organisation in comparison to other organisations working in the education domain (also which started operations during the pandemic period)?

We will put the outputs into action by:

1. Incorporating better practices to work with the children and local youth teachers in the most marginalised contexts of India

2. Refining the current solution to incorporate the missing aspects and 

3. Evaluate and rework  our strategy to scale for the next 3 to 5 years 

4. Re-examine our partnership strategy, nature of partnerships and engagement to build a thriving collective for the children in the country

Desired short-term outcomes – answering the questions:

1. Is LIFI on the path towards achieving our vision and mission?

2. How is LIFI able to impact children, so far? How is it any different from their state previously? 

3. How have the lives of the Youth Teacher Leaders changed through LIFI’s intervention? Are they better equipped and prepared to work full-time in the education sector? Is the current support model adequate and does it suit the needs of the teachers? 

4. How have partnerships worked for LIFI so far? What do they need to do to sustain their current set of partners? 

5. And finally, refining the existing program by incorporating inputs to continuously improve by 2024

Desired Long-term outcomes

1. Incorporating fellows’ inputs to make changes to the program that offer  the children and the youth teachers the most effective intervention so they feel better prepared for the 21st century 

2. Redesigning our organizational scaling and expansion plan

3. Re-evaluating our strategic partnerships, including how to leverage them for maximum organizational impact