Aspiring managers' tale of corporate social responsibility

ALLAHABAD: Amit, Ankit and Bina have now started identifying numbers 1-10 and have picked up on first few English alphabets, thanks to an initiative of a group of 10 MBA (rural development) students of Gobind Ballabh Pant Social Science Institute.
On Monday, a team of MBA students reached Poore Surdaspur Primary School in Bahadurpur block and taught as many as 70 students about simple theorems of mathematics through video presentation and alphabets with cartoon characters.
The e-learning (easy learning) campaign aims at enhancing the quality of education in primary school through new technological and managerial approach. It also looks to motivate children of marginalised section toward education and assisting them to improve their knowledge & personality.
The effort undertaken under the umbrella of PRAYAS (Professional Research & Youth Action for Society) consists of five activities, which include computer literacy, meditation class, video presentation, caricature presentation of alphabets and personality development class.
Talking to TOI, Ashutosh Pandey, one of the MBA student said, "The idea of e-learning came into my mind when I had gone to appear in a bank entrance exam at a convent school, where I noticed that children of convent school were taught by their teachers through video presentation. After observing this, I convinced my friends (MBA IIIrd semester students) to take the similar exercise in primary schools with an aim to educate the children from rural background using computers and e-learning.
Apart from mathematics class, the children were also taught about Yoga and meditation. The primary students were briefed about the benefits of yoga and medication. "School principal, Kamlakant too appreciated the efforts of the PRAYAS and appealed them to take other classes, as the students from rural background evinced interest to e-learning," Pandey said.
Interestingly, despite hailing from rural background, most of the children were aware of computers and their usage, as they have heard from their teachers or elders.
The MBA students said that they would be choosing primary schools of Bahadurpur block one by one for the same. Later, the exercise would be carried out to primary schools of other adjoining blocks.
The students engaged in helping the children are: Ashutosh Pandey, Avantika Chandra, Pankaj Dwivedi, Ramjee Tripathi, Prashant Awasthi, Pushpendra Singh, Sarita, Satya Prakash, Vijay Kumar Tripathi and Vidya Sagar Tiwari.