What we do
Our Transformative Programs
At the heart of our mission is a deep commitment to transforming the learning experience for children through creative and impactful initiatives. Our wide range of programs is thoughtfully designed to enhance and support every stage of a child’s learning journey. We strive to cultivate curiosity, critical thinking, and a lifelong love of learning through reading. Through these efforts, we envision a world where every child has the opportunity to thrive and reach their full potential, regardless of their background.
Mobile Library
PUSTAKAAR is our primary project and is a mobile library program which provides access to story books and non-curriculum reading material to children that otherwise do not have access to quality reading opportunities. The primary goal of this programme is to spread the joy of reading and inculcate a love for reading in every child. We have an inventory of around 25,000 English story books that are carefully sorted into different levels and organized into baskets. These books are eventually carried into classrooms and circulated once in a week. The children get a chance to choose their preferred title, use it for a week and exchange the book with another title the following week.
Volunteer led Story Reading
Our reading program is designed to build interest and engage children in language enrichment skills through story books. Our volunteers visit a designated school every week and conduct read- aloud story sessions to primary grade students. This volunteer-run program is aimed to build interest and engage children through stories, enriching their communication and creativity. Our volunteers conduct story reading sessions once in a week. The volunteer is provided with a ‘reading packet’ that contains a read aloud book, a lesson plan and activity sheets to be conducted during the session. These activities encompass vocabulary building, grammar, creative thinking, and comprehension. NO teaching experience is required to conduct these sessions! All we need from a volunteer is one hour of commitment in a week and loads of enthusiasm. They commit to 25-35 sessions in a year.
Reading Accelerator Program
This is a mobile application-based program that aims to provide a varied collection of digital books and a digital assistant to improve English reading skills. Ansh Foundation provides shared android tablets to schools and orphanages where children spend time everyday reading stories from the installed Read Along application (from Google Inc). Separate profiles are created for each student on the tablets and reading activity and progress is tracked and monitored per student.
Our pilot programme using the Read Along app at two of the Rainbow Homes orphanages last year was expanded to 10 more orphanages this year and 2 of our partner schools- Vikas Model School and Indian People’s School. 230 children are now a part of this programme using 43 Lenovo tabs across 12 orphanages and 2 schools. Through this offering, we aim to provide a varied collection of digital books and a digital assistant to improve the English reading skills of children.
ANSH Scholarship
The scholarship program was started during the pandemic to help parents who could no longer afford to send their children to school due to the financial instability caused because of the lockdown. Through this program, Ansh Foundation provides financial aid to children from partner schools who are unable to stay in school due to financial difficulties. This is primarily focused on students in secondary school to ensure they can qualify for college or take up vocational programs to help them become financially independent. Every year we aim to support ten such students with an average of Rs. 20,000/- tuition fee per student.
The selection of students is done considering the financial condition of the family, giving immediate preference to students who have lost a parent or whose parents have a medical condition due to which they are unable meet the expenses. The students’ previous year’s academic performance, and attendance are taken into account before selecting them for the scholarship.
Library Resource
Pustakaar has partnerships with several other organizations in the education sector, as their primary reading resource. Teach For India, Rainbow Homes Foundation, Ishva Foundation, Rural Development Foundation all use Pustakaar books as additional resources in their classrooms. The story books are loaned out to the volunteers/coordinators of these organizations for a whole year. They eventually use these books as resources to conduct various language development activities. We impact around 4000 students through this program.
Story Station
Ansh also supports schools which do not have libraries by setting up libraries to be utilized by the children. These libraries will be set up and managed by the ANSH team members. Every year a fresh set of books is added to the existing inventory. The idea behind this is to support those schools with a library system that are located beyond our regular commutable distance where exchange of books is difficult to conduct on a weekly basis by a Pustakaar team member. The lending process is thereafter managed by the teachers/librarians in charge in respective schools..
