Team4Tech, a nonprofit impact accelerator headquartered in the US with hubs worldwide, aims to bridge the digital equity gap in education and create learning opportunities for underserved communities across the globe. We were fortunate enough to be invited by them to present our organization to their community of practice. Moderated by Goutham, Team4Tech’s Asia Hub Manager, and Emily, Team4Tech's Community of Practice Manager, it was an hour of thought-provoking and engaging discussion, filled with earnest questions and quality feedback from several other community members who joined in from around the world.
We spoke about our three-pronged approach—how we engage with children through our workshops on creative learning (Kriti) Activities, upload the projects on ZubHub, and aim to develop the 4Cs of 21st-century skills among learners: creativity, communication, critical thinking, and collaboration. During the session, we explored questions on technologies, partnerships, and fundraising, discussing creative tools for classrooms, documentation and collaboration tools, and the potential use of ZubHub in various educational settings. We also sought advice on improving and promoting such tools, forming successful partnerships and strategies for effective fundraising, and receiving valuable feedback from educators and participants. Our presentation evolved into a lively discussion among all attendees about our work and significantly helped us brainstorm how we should proceed.
Although the field of activity-based creative education is still considered a niche in India, it is gaining traction, as it emerged from our discussion, and we can leverage many opportunities to broaden our reach. The Indian government, as well as several state governments like those of Delhi and Tamil Nadu, have shown keen interest in incorporating experiential learning in classrooms. We are interested in exploring possibilities for collaborating with them and other nonprofits that share our vision to work on the ground.
Another idea that emerged during the discussion was to conduct a needs analysis with other nonprofits and government school teachers and principals to better understand the ground realities in which we want to work. Additionally, we could add more activities to our Kriti Activities repository that align with the established Indian curriculum. While initially developing the activities, we focused on connecting them with concepts of physics, aiming to keep them as creative and open-ended as possible while also teaching kids basic physics concepts. This is definitely a worthwhile avenue to explore and could help us collaborate directly with schools and state governments.
Overall, we spoke about our work, our challenges, and how we work around them. The great ideas discussed in this session will help us improve our work further. We extend our heartfelt thanks to Team4Tech for providing us with the opportunity to present our work and also to the community members who joined and shared their valuable input.