Mentor India 2.0 – Extended Hours, Renewed Vision
16th of July was a cold Saturday morning in Bengaluru. We picked up planned giveaways and a couple of bundles of Mitra Pustak with groggy eyes and stifled yawns. We drove down the now-so-familiar 120 km road to Chikkarasinakere, eagerness starting to overpower the sleeplessness!
Kick-starting Mentor India 2.0
Having gained invaluable learning experiences from Mentor India 1.0, we are now on a new journey to Chikkarasinakere Government School near Maddur, with a renewed vision of creating rural entrepreneurs.
We are treating this as our second pilot phase, with extended hours this time- 8 Saturdays! Additional 15 hours will be dedicated to problem solving, algorithm building, and computer basics, on top of our existing 30 hours of Mitra Pustak. We are calling it Mentor India 2.0.
We’re working towards and looking forward to two tangible outcomes from the second pilot-
- Measure the growth of our students using the new scales we’ve developed with the help of a Lebanese Professor
- Collect at least 6 incredible solutions developed by the students for the problem statements identified by themselves
Bright Students, Challenged Mentors
With the goal in our minds, we kicked off Mentor India 2.0 at 1 pm with ice breaking sessions and introductory rituals, setting up a few ground rules. We also did certain analysis on the current state of affairs, which we intend to monitor closely over the 45 hours.
When we ended the marathon class at 5.30 pm, Anusha—a very bubbly student—was checking with us whether it is 3 pm! Our greatest honor was when the School Headmaster chose not to have his lunch in the afternoon and had it with us after the class, instead. He said it was his way of showing respect to the selfless tedious work we are putting up. We were humbled beyond words.
Creating Young Rural Change-Makers
As you know, with this program, we are combining Skill India and Startup India in rural segments. We’re trying to make villages self-sufficient, which will also give some breathing space to the overpopulated urban India.
We want these rural kids to be the change-makers. We want to enable them to be able to make good use of every opportunity to lead, succeed and self-sustain.
KYS Goes Full-Time
With your help, we want to play the role of enablers, drivers and influencers. We, at KnowYourStar.com, have embraced this journey wholeheartedly and have now gone full time. We have quit our lucrative jobs to ensure that we give our brain and sweat to Mentor India.
On the ground, we are facing umpteen number of challenges every single day. The latest one is that there are only 2 working computers in the Chikkarasinakere Government School’s computer lab. We now need you more than we ever did to keep the wheels turning! We seek your help as always. Invest in us or connect us with potential impact investors who can help us scale up without compromising the goal or the quality of work we do. Join us!
