Chandigarh
23 October 2018
DIVYA AZAD
DataWind Innovations Pvt. Ltd., the leader in delivering internet access to emerging markets, is happy to partner with Sikhi Awareness Foundation, Canada (an NGO)in their endeavour to providing the best quality education to the primary schools of Punjab.
A Press conference was held today at the Chandigarh Press Club with Mr. Shamandeep Singh, Founder and CEO of SAF-International and Mr. Rupinder Singh, Executive Vice President- DataWind Innovations Pvt. Ltd. who shared the vision and mission of their organizations. A demo of the Smart classroom setup was also given.
Presently, over 300 setups across the state of Punjab have been done. These have been sponsored by individuals, panchayats, villagers, MLAs, NGOs, organisations as their CSR initiatives. The target is to get all 13,000 government primary schools across the state of Punjab to have this setup.
The setupincludes a tablet, with educational content for class 1to class 5 inclusive of pre-primary class. The content has been approved by PSEB. With this a projector, speaker set, accessories and on-site teacher training on how to operate the equipmentand upload new content related to syllabus. This will allow teachers to independently operate the machine.
Mr. Rupinder Singh said“We strongly believe in ‘technology for a cause’ and our journey is to connect India’s forgotten billion including empowering children who are the future of the country. DataWind has been working relentlessly towards reaching out to children who cannot afford good education, by delivering affordable tablet PCs and good quality educational content. This setup as part of the SmartPunjab project provides support to school teachers in imparting education in an entertaining and fun way. Touching the lives of the children at primary level, when they are most receptive to absorbing all what they see and hear, provides us the motivation to continue striving further. Our journey thatstarted in 2011 with the development of the Aakash tablet computer continues with this “sewa” project. As we look at Digital India, it is imperative that benefits of improved access to technology and internet reach the very bottom of the pyramid. We believe that digitalisation should be integrated with the larger objective of meeting the long-term development goals at the grassroots level.”
Mr. Shamandeep Singh shared that: “There is a steep decline in enrolments in the government schools in India, on top of it, dropout and absenteeism rate is rising. I wanted to bring these children back into schooling by creating new interest in them with this technology.
Accessibility to computers allow children to receive a well-rounded education and gain additional skills to become better prepared for post-secondary education and future employment. Furthermore, this is an opportunity for SAF to provide supplementary learning material to provide children with more holistic education and knowledge.”
