As I write this, I got a report from our database guy that we have received the 1800th member sign up! Thanks to The Hindu, that’s a staggering number in just 23 days. The power of press indeed is mighty! :)
It took us quite a while to read and sort all the emails we received from almost all over the world. Majority of the writers were from India, USA, UK, Canada, Australia, Dubai and Germany. We also had lone representatives from Korea, Rome, Maldives and Saudi Arabia.
Out of the 1800 emails, there were about 20 individuals and organizations willing to adopt schools. There were others who came to meet us directly. These organizations will need teachers and we’ll have the Education For Free volunteer teachers helping them out.
To help us with our plans, implementation, coordination, we have formed an Education For Free group comprising people from all professions, students, homemakers, and retired folks.
A quick update of what we are up to so far:
We are working on our Teacher For Free portal which will be launched soon. This will be a place where volunteer teachers and schools will register. A place for schools and volunteer teachers to find each other.
We are also looking for sponsors to fund about 20 schools. For each school we need about Rs. 60 thousand for the equipment (projector, computer, webcam).
We are working on putting up a process in place to train new volunteer teachers, training and deployment technical support, coordination between teachers and EFF etc. This will eventually be automated from the TFF (Teacher For Free) portal.
And btw, we have a full time Education For Free Virtual Classroom teacher, Ambica Ayla, who after reading the article in The Hindu came to our office soaked in rain asking if she could volunteer for a day in a week—her only day off from work. Her enthusiasm and passion for children and education touched us so! We interviewed her the next day and if I had a math teacher even half as good as her, I would have been flying saucers today. :)
She teaches math, physics and chemistry to 9 and 10th graders.
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