MAD- Make A Difference
This entry has been selected as a winner in the
Staples Youth Social Entrepreneur Competition competition.
Project Street Address
Project City
Project Province/State
Project Postal/Zip Code
Project Country
Field of Work
education
If Field of Work is “other” please define in 1-2 words below
Year project started (or projected start date) (yyyy)
2006
YouTube Upload
Project URL (or link to any media coverage)
What is the primary problem your venture is trying to address and how are you addressing it (or planning to address it)?
We teach children living in orphanages and street shelters. Our children are street smart, intelligent and mature. Yet hardly any of them get the opportunity to continue their education after 10th. The problems are two pronged. Firstly financial. Most children are sponsored till the age of 15 and after that they are on their own. Secondly, and more importantly, the lack of quality education. These children go to sub standard vernacular schools that do not adequately prepare them for further studies. Children who finish their 10th cannot read a sentence in English without assistance. Hence they struggle and often dropout even if we are able to find a sponsor for higher education.
We address the second problem by providing life skills training which includes English, Computer skills and motivation.
Our English course is a 3 year program in which, every year our children go though 56 interactive classes of two hour duration each in a span of seven months.
All our orphanages have computers in the ratio 6:1 and we ensure every student gets half an hour everyday to learn, Linux, Open Office, Photoshop, Networking etc.
The first problem is addressed by making sure every child passing through our program is sponsored and well taken care of.
Name Your Project
MAD- Make A Difference
Describe Your Idea
Project Description
To bridge the inequality in society by unleashing the potential of the youth.
Unique and different
1. Youth: Two out of three respondents in a survey indicated that the youth wanted to help, but didn’t know how. The biggest innovation of MAD is to provide a simple but powerful platform to volunteer. All a volunteer needs to put in is 2 hours a week and MAD takes care of everything from identifying a nearby orphanage to fixing convenient timings to providing professional training.
2. Syllabus: We have been working on our syllabus for the past 3 years and now we can proudly say that we have one of the most comprehensive and practically oriented English syllabuses for speaking skills.
3. Online integration: To enable participatory learning every class taken in MAD is clearly documented online in our community and every new activity is put up in our blog so that our volunteers never run out of ideas while preparing for classes
4. End to End support: Provide career guidance and place all our children.
Project plan
Today MAD has 300 active volunteers teaching more than 1000 children in Cochin, Chennai and Pune. By April 2009 we will expand to Hyderabad, Bangalore
and Bombay where we already have a volunteer base standing by. We will also launch a full fledged social networking site for volunteers of different cities to interact and learn. We also plan to expand our vocational courses and to enter into tie ups with corporate to directly recruit our children.
Partnerships
Orphanages - 8 in Cochin, 4 in Chennai, 4 in Pune
TTF - The Teacher Trainer Foundation: One of India’s best teacher trainers who train our volunteers twice every year and also worked with us to develop a full fledged syllabus.
OLPC - One Laptop Per Child: MAD is one of the organizations approached by the digital bridge foundation to help implement the OLPC project. They require our large volunteer to experiment and evolve a working syllabus for the laptop that can be implemented in India.
Teach India- The initiative that was launched recently by Times of India is associated with our Chennai branch.
Impact
We want to bring about a situation where all children decide their careers based on their aspirations and potential rather than on their financial backgrounds.
Effectiveness
We deal with children rescued from the streets, orphans and children from broken families. As of today we are teaching 1000 children in 3 cities.
How do you engage and impact the community?
Children
• Imparting quality education which is practically oriented and enormously helpful for their future without any cost to them.
• Guidance on future career opportunities, scholarship availability, and other academically oriented information.
• Reminding the children that they are not alone in their struggle and that people do care.
• Getting them in touch with people of their age group from privileged sections of society, to whom they can relate to and learn from.
Orphanages
• Improving their infrastructural facilities in their organizations by starting libraries, computer labs and spreading awareness about their needs
to specialized agencies which can provide help
Volunteers
• Make them more conscious of their social responsibility and sensitize them to the needs of the underprivileged in their surroundings.
• Our panel of experts is top of the line and will coach them in the art of teaching and help them with syllabus.
• Provide a conduit they otherwise would not have had to channelize their efforts.
• We hope to get them recognition for their work by affiliating to institutions of repute like Young Indians (Youth wing of CII), Round Table of India etc., provide them with certificates and publicize their efforts.
• We will enrich them with the interactions they have with sections of society they would never have met otherwise.
• Provide them an opportunity to manage schools and take up posts in the organization, developing their managerial talents and leadership skills.
• Group meetings to interact with other volunteers to share their experiences.
How do you measure this impact?
Today our children can completely comprehend when spoken to them in English and also has the confidence to attempt to respond in English but once they complete the course we expect them to speak confidently and legibly.
We intend to quantify our impact by establishing an English speaking standard and then certify those children who reach that standard.
Currently computer is just another tool for our kids and they are completely comfortable using them for day to day purposes. We intent to certify them with vocation specific certificates like CCNA, MCSE, RHC etc.
Placements: We will maintain the record of every student who has passed through our program. Our placement program is student specific and every student
is taken care of and followed up at regular intervals.
Obstacles
Financial: The administrative cost for MAD is almost zero. The little that we incurred was spent by the volunteers themselves. But now that we have
expanded, and as most of our volunteers are students, we are unable to meet our major expenses like the teacher training costs.
We also have two ongoing projects
1. Computer Project where we are trying to reduce the student computer ratio to 3:1 for better exposure
2. Reading Room: To start a reading room that’s conducive to reading in every orphanage
Hence this year on, the growth of MAD shall also depend on funds and not just its volunteers. Being able to raise funds without getting tied down by it is one of the biggest worries we share this year.
This Entry is about (Issues)
(or how do you expect your initiative will be financed)
The Friends of Mad Project is an innovative method by which we hope to raise our funds in the future. Currently, Mad is sustained by the contributions of the core team members, well wishers, and a few corporates who were interested in some of our projects.
Aside from financial sustainability, how do you plan to grow and sustain your project?
MAD is a structured organization which functions more like a corporate than an NGO. We have a well defined process that ensures the smooth running of the organization. With most of our co ordination done through our website we have managed to create a scalable model that we intend to replicate in the other cities where we have a volunteer base.
Finance details
As of date we have raise Rs 3 30 000 for computers, Rs 45 000 for library books, Rs 1 50 000 for teacher training Rs 1 00 000 for annual camps.
All other expenses were met by the National Board.
Every city in MAD has got the following Core team members:
President
Secretary
Treasurer
V.P Human Resource
To Ensure the availability of well trained qualified teachers round the year
V.P Public Relations
1.Keep the people in MAD well informed
2.Spread the MAD word outside
3.Make life fun for the MAD Folks
V.P Placements
1.Placement Options for every 10th standard student
2.Scholarships to every student who wishes to study
3.Identifying Talent and promoting it.
V.P Fundraisers
Make the branch Sustainable
V.P Training
Syllabus
Ensure every volunteer is trained and up to date
Maintain liaison with the teacher trainers
V.P Resource
Maintaining and Managing all MAD’s Resource
V.P Computers
Maintaining MAD’s Website, Webapp, Blog and community
Creative funding
Friends Of MAD: In MAD what we are looking forward to is a regular and sustainable income more than a random big donation. We also want the people who contribute to understand what we are doing and support our cause. Hence all those people who are interested in being part of MAD but cannot spare their time for it can be a Friend of MAD by contributing Rs 100 every month to MAD. In return we’ll keep them informed on what’s happening in MAD through news letters and blogs.
Other non finance needs
Teacher Training would be the most important resource that MAD can have, Our volunteers need to be constantly trained and syllabus constantly updated based on new observations made on the ground. We feel our biggest asset would be the experience we have on the grass root level and the syllabus we have evolved based on it.
Motivation
It all started when we decided to start teaching English at the YMCA poor boys home. When we started, our goals were simple, spend some time with the kids,
teach them some English, show them couple of movies and basically have some fun while doing all this. But a few days with them made us think.
The students we taught were exceedingly capable and more mature than the normal kids you find in private schools. They were aware of the realities of
life and they knew they had to work hard to escape them. In spite of all the hard work put in by them we knew that hardly any of those kids would ever
study beyond the 12th grade. Almost all of them would be forced to drop out after their 10th and would end up doing menial jobs in workshops and hotels
rendering all those years of education useless and all their potential wasted.
This is when we started thinking about starting a youth volunteer network that would enable our friends to help these children because we knew many
of our friends wanted to help out too.. Empowered education is all about preparing the kids for the future by helping them cross the language barrier,
by giving them the necessary exposure to the outside world and to keep them informed about their options and alternatives and finally to provide the
necessary help and support they require to keep going.
With the youth by our side we knew this was possible. And thus MAD was born.
Awards
This is the second award we are applying for. The Manthan Award results are not out yet.
Broader context
The culture of volunteering is still very young in our country. Its our dream that one day it shall become a small but inevitable part of everybody’s life. We strongly believe that if we all had just 2 hours to spare a week for the people around us, the world would be a better place.
Ongoing
I am one of the founding members of MAD and today it is a major pat of my life. I see myself working with this organisation for the rest of my life as an active volunteer and a National Body member.
What is your age?
21
How did you hear about this competition?
Through my friend Nitasha Kachru
 | Raphael Wanjaria Njararuhi added this idea to their favorites. - hace 51 días. |
| Elinor Rowlands added this idea to their favorites. - hace 116 días. |
 | Mallikarjuna Iytha said: Hi Guys! you know its my story-- this is the story of bunch of students from JNU---we did it in 2000--- I know how it feels--- iam ... about this idea. - hace 449 días leer más > |
| Jithin Krishnan said: Thank you.. And yes, we'll keep going alright.. :) ---------- Jithin J Krishnan about this idea. - hace 458 días leer más > |
| michel kahandja said: We support your effort and we are joing you, so tha together, we can be able to make a difference. peace and Keep going. Michel ... about this idea. - hace 460 días leer más > |
| Jithin Krishnan said: Will do..And thanks for these kind words.. :) ---------- Jithin J Krishnan about this idea. - hace 485 días leer más > |
| Jithin Krishnan said: Thanks for believing in us saglik.. :) ---------- Jithin J Krishnan about this idea. - hace 485 días leer más > |
| selim ayd?n said: ---------- That is the solutionsa?l?keverybody want about this idea. - hace 488 días leer más > |
| selim ayd?n said: ---------- That is the solutionsa?l?keverybody want about this idea. - hace 488 días leer más > |
| Okpara Anthony said: i am happy for you project, when i went through it, it taught me alot of time. as a change agent i look for changing more life. you are ... about this idea. - hace 488 días leer más > |
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