The project, “OnBoard”, was launched in DATE, to address the educational needs of students who fall within the category of Economically Weaker Section. The primary mission of the project is to support schools who cater to these underprivileged students, and build an institutional network of NGO schools who are equipped with up-to-date educational curriculum to train students for the changing world. For this, the project will be employing a dual-way approach that will consist of training peer-mentors who would act as the continuous guide for the economically-weaker mentees, and developing a network of NGO schools who work with EWS students.
In line with its mission, the project will be bringing out a curriculum that will elaborate upon the importance of peer-mentorship, and train student mentors in the different techniques required to be a good mentor. This will be followed by regular mentoring sessions during which time the mentee students will have the opportunity to seek subject-related guidance, English language support, and research assistance for their respective capstone projects from their mentors. With this, the project will also organize a fundraiser the proceeds from which will be going towards providing classroom infrastructure to the underserved students for them to have access to curriculum materials and digital learning tools. For the capstone project in particular, these students would also be provided with a primer that will elaborate upon the different strategies of critical thinking and problem solving based on real-world examples. All this would help the target students with developing innovative projects that would be featured at a science fair organized by “OnBoard”.
On the other leg, the project will be reaching out to numerous NGO schools supporting EWS students so that the science fair would also become the grounds for schools to network and collaborate with each other for a long-term engagement. The outreach would comprise of a detailed pitch that will describe the benefits for the partnering schools, and how such an extended engagement would benefit the final stakeholders of the project.