UDAAN – A Teach for India and Indian Institute of Foreign Trade initiative

Indian Institute of Foreign Trade, Delhi hosted underprivileged students from various NGOs across Delhi-NCR with the endeavour of imparting basic Digital Literacy and underscoring the theme of Digital India set as a goal by our honourable Prime Minister. As a precursor to QuoVadis 2016, IIFT’s annual cultural cum management fest, the student fraternity of IIFT conducted a 5-hour workshop on 30^th Dec 2015. The workshop was first among a series of workshops that are scheduled to take place at IIFT  in coming days. The theme for QuoVadis 2016 is “Enabling India Digitally” and has been kept so keeping in mind aligning the vision of the institute’s efforts with that of the government initiatives and thus help achieve the dream of Digital India.

The workshop was conducted in partnership with Teach For India, the Indian non-profit organisation that works on bridging the educational gaps, especially for the underprivileged kids. The workshop began at 11 am with students accompanied by their teachers from various NGOs arriving at IIFT Delhi campus. A volunteer teacher from Teach For India was also present for the workshop. The to and fro transportation for students was courtesy Delhi Police. The students were guided to respective rooms and seated by IIFT student volunteers who apprised the students of the objectives of the workshop and the topics that were to be covered with them.

The curriculum for the workshop was designed by Teach For India volunteers and IIFT volunteers executed it accordingly in the designated time span. Students were aware of what the Internet is and how they can use the Internet constructively in their education and day-to-day lives. The topics covered included Introduction to MS Word, keyboard typing basics, use of E-mail as a means of communication (Gmail account creation, signing in, signing out, sending and receiving emails etc ), use of Wikihow as educational and hobby-pursuing means, use of YouTube and lots more. The first session was followed by a 30 minutes lunch break at 1 pm for the students where meals were served to them in IIFT campus itself. The second session began immediately after it and concluded at 4 pm. Throughout the 2 sessions, IIFT volunteers and the attendee students were seen engaging each other in exploring the different topics of workshop’s agenda. While some learned the process of sending emails, some students went on to surprise the volunteers with their impromptu photo editing skills on Picasa tool. When asked about their experience, the students expressed sheer joy on what they had learnt throughout the day and expressed willingness to come again for the next workshop. The teachers who accompanied the students also expressed gratitude and happiness for the learning that was imparted to students. Towards the end, all the attendee students were felicitated with certificates while their teachers were handed over the mementos from the IIFT students fraternity. The Teach For India volunteer expressed sheer delight at the way the IIFT volunteers taught the attendees and also praised the attendees for their learning spirit. The students expressed their joy by personally handing over the certificates to IIFT volunteers. The workshop concluded with photographs of all those involved in the workshop to mark a memorable day and capture the wonderful moment of happiness spread by IIFT and Teach For India in the lives of these students. This article has been authored by Anuj Kansal currently pursuing his MBA (IB 2015-17) from IIFT Delhi!