BHUMI

The Journey

The journey of DnE began 3 yrs back when BHUMI took up Zilla Parishad Govt School, Rasoolpura where DnE was first implemented for 9th std and 10th std for a period of 2 years. The pass percentage of the school was hanging around 13% for more than a decade. After the first year of Tutoring and Mentoring by working professionals, the pass percentage rose from 13% to 34%. This is when BHUMI realised that mentors often lack skills to listen and empathize and are often unable to reach out to the children from these under-privileged communities, e.g. patronizing attitudes and prejudices. There was a dire need to train mentors in effective listening skills, empathy and make them more socially aware and responsible. In the second year, BHUMI tied up with OU Dept of Psychology to come up with a Mentor Training module that focussed on key mentoring skills sch as listening, problem solving, etc. After the second year of DnE, the pass percentage increased from 34% to 46% , the highest in the history of the school. There was 100% continued education after 10th. BHUMI supported all the students who passed in the school and got them enrolled.

For the third year of operations, BHUMI tied up with the Government of AP and scaled up the program to 7 government schools across the twin cities of Hyderabad and Secunderabad. The target was to reach out and positively impact the lives of 1000 government school children. We managed to reach out to close to 400 students studying in 10th std across all these schools. The target population for mentors and tutors is mostly college students and young working professionals.

The proposal for DnE builds on past experience as well as research of and visits with some of the centers of excellence in mentoring.

This year, BHUMI targets mentoring and tutoring 1200+ government school children studying across 9 government schools in the twin cities of Hyderabad and Secunderabad.

Mentors/Tutors will go through a BHUMI certified personal mastery and leadership program and will be given a mentoring/tutoring and Leadership tool kit, and coaching sessions developed by the BHUMI's Learning and Development board consisting of highly experienced trainers from across the country, in collaboration with many experts around the world such as Osmania University Psychology Department, MIT, Society For Organizational Learning (SOL).

The tool kit is adapted for the socio political context of these children, hence has a very high chance of success.