Agastya_International_Foundation

Agastya International Foundation

Agastya International Foundation

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Agastya International Foundation (Agastya)[1] is an Indian education trust and non-profit organization based in Bangalore, India whose mission is "to spark curiosity, nurture creativity and instil confidence" among economically disadvantaged children and teachers in India.[2] A team of scientists, educators, and entrepreneurs led by Ramji Raghavan founded Agastya in 1999.[3] Agastya's founders include the late K.V. Raghavan, former chairman of Engineers India Limited and Dr. P.K. Iyengar, former chairman of the Indian Atomic Energy Commission. Agastya runs hands-on science and art education programs in rural, semi-urban, and urban regions across 19 Indian states. It is one of the world's largest mobile and hands-on science education programs catering to economically disadvantaged children and public-school teachers.[4]

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Programs

Campus Creativity Lab

Agastya has a "Campus Creativity Lab" located on a 172-acre campus in Kuppam, Andhra Pradesh.[3][5] It houses science and art centers, including among other labs an astronomy center, a planetarium, a center for creative teaching, an innovation hub, a science model-making center, and the Ramanujan Math Park, an open-air ecology lab. The school has 800 teachers and 280 night school volunteers.[3] The campus welcomes over 650 children every day from 8 to 10 schools,[3] additionally, teachers from seven Indian states are trained here.[6]

The school has cumulatively reached over eight million with around 1.5 million children every year apart from 2.5 million teachers.[3] In 2016, the school had a ₹300 million ($4.1 million) annual budget, 850 employees, 138 mobile lab-vans, 50 labs on bikes, and 60 science centers spread around the 172-acre main campus in Kuppam.[3]

Other educational programs

Agastya's programs across India are also delivered by over 190 Mobile Lab and iMobile Lab Vans, 90 Lab-on-Bikes and TechLaBikes, 100 Science Centers, and nearly 700 night village school centers. It has trained over 30,000 Young Instructor Leaders (peer-to-peer teachers). Through its Young Instructor Leader (YIL) program begun in 2007, the foundation promotes and nurtures children of exceptional ability to learn.[3] The program became a game-changer for many students, for example by teaching children to boost their organizational prowess and develop their decision-making skills. It also has encouraged many students to overcome stage fright.[3]

The foundation operates mobile labs that cover village schools in and around the district, thereby enabling children to perform experiments by themselves.[3] As of January 2020, Agastya has directly reached over 12 million children (50% girls) and 250,000 teachers from vulnerable and economically disadvantaged communities. As a charitable trust, Agastya is funded by Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) engagement and donations, governmental funding, and individual donations. In 2010, Agastya signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Karnataka state government to establish core science activity centers in five districts in north Karnataka.[7] The foundation conducted a science fair in Bihar in 2012 which reached out to 24,000 students and 1,100 teachers through a bequest of the Late Mr. Abdul Kalam (Ex-President of India) to sponsor a program in Bihar.[3]

One of the organization's central aims is to develop student curiosity in the world around them and to launch them on a path of lifetime discovery and understanding.[3]

Activities

As a result of the COVID-19 outbreak (2020) Agastya has provided online training for public school teachers in over 15 states, and has helped students set up science labs at home.[8]

Awards and recognitions

Agastya won the Google Global Impact Award in 2013[9] and was ranked among the top 100 global innovators by The Rockefeller Foundation Next Century Awards.[10] In 2016, Agastya's founder Ramji Raghavan received the Deshpande Foundation's Sandbox Catalyst Award from Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus and the Innovation for India Award from the Marico Innovation Foundation.[11]

In 2019 Agastya received an Andhra Pradesh State Green Award for its work to regenerate the ecosystem of its 172-acre campus, which is documented in the book, 'The Roots of Creativity'.[12] In 2020, Agastya was featured in the book, 'Seven Sutras of Innovation' by Nikhil Inamdar, as one of eight organizations in India that as "start-ups to scale-ups are transforming India". As the organization's efforts have gained recognition around the world, it has been approached by well-known educational organizations for experiments in educational innovation.[3] The project-based learning program, for example, was started by Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering in Massachusetts with Agastya.[3]

References

  1. [1]
    Saha, Devanik (12 September 2012). "Fostering Innovation and Creativity in Rural India: Agastya Foundation". Huffington Post. Retrieved 24 August 2018.
  2. [2]
    Agastya in Forbes
  3. [3]
    Pulakkat, Hari (10 January 2016). "How Agastya International Foundation is creating tomorrow's leaders in rural India". The Economic Times. Retrieved 3 March 2021.
  4. [4]
    "Education World Article". Archived from the original on 27 May 2012. Retrieved 27 September 2012.
  5. [5]
    "Agastya Science Center: Education and Hope from a Fountain of Knowledge". Archived from the original on 21 September 2013. Retrieved 12 September 2013.
  6. [6]
    "'Agastya Foundation' - A Knowledge Hub For Village Students: ETV Report". YouTube. Archived from the original on 15 December 2021. Retrieved 19 December 2017.
  7. [7]
    "Agastya International Foundation | Who Are Our Partners". www.agastya.org. Retrieved 19 December 2017.
  8. [8]
    "Agastya helps govt school students set up science labs at home". Livemint. 6 July 2020.
  9. [9]
    "'Google.org Impact Challenge India 2013". withgoogle.
  10. [10]
    "'THE ROCKEFELLER FOUNDATION NEXT CENTURY INNOVATORS AWARDS". opportunitiesforafricans.
  11. [11]
    "'Aha moments". chinadailyhk.
  12. [12]
    "'The Roots of Creativity- Ecology at Agastya by Agastya International Foundation - Issuu". issuu.
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