Pavithra* hails from Haveli, Pune and belongs to a family of minimal means. The twelve-year-old’s parents, despite making very little for a livelihood, wanted to ensure that their daughter gets a good education and a bright future. So, they sent her to the Zilha Parishad Primary School (ZPPS) Sortapwadi, Haveli. This opened up a world of dreams and aspirations for the young girl.
“I hope to become a mechanical engineer someday. I love learning about new innovations and I love to see how machines work. One day, I hope to make them myself,” she tells Team BYJU’S.
To further her engineering dreams, Pavithra made sure to go to school every day. She would learn new lessons and also get to play with her friends. Life was good for Pavithra, despite the hardships, because school was a place of hope for her and her family.
But when the lockdown was announced in 2020, things took a turn for the worst. Like the millions of children across India, Pavithra was also out of school. The learning came to a standstill and she was emotionally low, not knowing how to cope with this situation.
“Things were very difficult for me. I couldn’t go to school, or even meet my friends. I found it difficult to study because I didn’t understand the concepts from the books without my teacher’s help,” she says.
Moreover, with both her parents being illiterate, there was a heavy lack of guidance for her. Nobody in her household was able to help her. However, her father strongly believed that this lack of resources shouldn’t hinder her education.
While the family was struggling to make ends meet, her father bought her a smartphone to help her continue her studies. But even though she was able to connect with her school teacher on WhatsApp, it wasn’t of much help.
She was quite bored and uninterested because of the lack of an interactive class. She even tried watching several videos on YouTube, but no content was able to guide her in the right direction. She was unable to get conceptual clarity and proper guidance from the videos.
At the right time, Save the Children India, an NGO that works towards protecting child rights swooped in and helped Pavithra get back to learning with the BYJU’S App licence.
“I knew about the BYJU’S App as I would often see advertisements on TV as well as on the phone. However, due to our family’s situation we were not able to purchase it,” Pavithra says.
“I was quite happy to receive the app licence. My studies have now become easier and I am able to get guidance with respect to any concepts thanks to the interactive videos. I especially love the mathematics chapters and the animations that help me learn better,” she adds.
While Pavithra is now happily engaged with the BYJU’S App, her parents, too, are quite happy that their daughter is occupied with her studies despite schools being closed. They have new hope that things will look better for her educational future.
Since 2008, Save the Children India has impacted more than 11 million lives of children across India in the fields of Health & Nutrition, Education, Child Protection, Humanitarian Response, as well as Disaster Risk Reduction and Child Poverty.
Jyoti Gandhi, Deputy Director of Individual Giving, Save the Children India, says, “This unprecedented situation has thrown off efforts of many years towards achieving our goals. A recent United Nations report expressed concerns over children from economically disadvantaged families struggling with access to remote learning and lack of quality educational content.”
“Through this partnership with BYJU’S, we are attempting to rewrite the future for children by ensuring that they are not deprived of learning continuity,” she adds.
BYJU’S Education for All has partnered with Save the Children India to help spread the learning and impact children with digital learning. Together, we hope to help these children find a bright and safe future.
*Name changed for safety purposes
BYJU’S Education for All is reaching out to underprivileged children across India. Through the BYJU’S Give programme, you can contribute to this mission and help children with quality digital learning. You can donate an old device, which we will refurbish, and then use the money raised to buy a new device. In case you do not have a device, you can also donate to an NGO partner, who will use the money to buy devices for children.
In both cases, we will load our BYJU’S Think & Learn Premium content onto these devices and distribute them to children in need.
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