Joy of giving week: Nokia donates to Adhyapana

Nokia, Bangalore donated the collections from their joy of giving week to Adhyapana.This money will be utilized for training students in English. This new initiative of Adhyapana is aimed at helping students who have done their schooling where the medium of education is not english. We will come up with a course to help these students make the transition to english medium education.
Supporting us in this initiative is Ms. Shilaja, a professional english trainer.The contributions from nokia will be utilized to fund the course for about 3 students.We thank Nokia for this noble gesture.

Adhyapana Wins the Social Enterpreneurship competition at VIT

The Adhyapana Team won this year's Social Transformers event organized by VIT university,Vellore.The event was a national level social entrepreneurship competition which attracted over 70 different entries from top colleges including IIT Bombay and COE,Pune. The Ideas of Adhyapana was unanimously chosen as the first among 16 final presentations that was short listed after 2 rounds of interviews and essays.

The judging panel consisted of a number of eminent people including

1.Mr. Charles Tsai, Global Youth Fund, Canada.
2.Mr. Vishnu Swaminathan, Change Leader- Housing For All Initiative, Ashoka Foundation.
3.Mr. Vasudev Avdhani, Advisor- NSR Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning, IIM Bangalore
4.Mr. Pankaj Jain – India legal associate –Acumen Fund,Hyderabad

The Missing Link ?

Deepak discusses effective methods to understand and study sybjects in his article which appeared in today's (9/9/2010) edition of the Deccan Herald. In the article he further talks about the need to interlink all the subjects to capture the bigger picture.The complete article can be found in the following link:

http://deccanheraldepaper.com/pdf/2010/09/09/20100909e_004100.pdf

Choosing the right MBA program

An article written by Shiva on choosing the right MBA program has appeared in DH Education(the educational supplement of the Deccan Herald on 26/8/2010.In the article, Shiva discusses the different MBA programs offered in India and provides tips on how to select the right B-School.

The entire article can be found in the following links:

http://deccanheraldepaper.com/pdf/2010/08/26/20100826eA001100.pdf
http://deccanheraldepaper.com/pdf/2010/08/26/20100826e_003100.pdf

International Education

An article written by Shiva on International MBA has appeared today (19/8/2010) in the Educational Supplement -DH Education of the Deccan Herald newspaper.The article deals with the application process for International MBAs.The complete article can be found in the following link:

http://deccanheraldepaper.com/pdf/2010/08/19/20100819e_004100.pdf

Library for Engineers

The Adhyapana has started a library consisting of books that will be useful to students pursuing their diploma and degrees in engineering. The library is meant for students who need books to help them with their core courses. The students can borrow the required books at the beginning of the semester and return it at the end of the semester.
The library has been formed with the books donated by various people after they have completed their courses. We encourage everyone to donate their used books so that these can be of some help to other students. The library is solely intended to help students who cannot afford to buy books. It is currently situated in the Adhyapana Office in Jayanagar 4th T block, Bangalore.For the complete address, Kindly refer to our website.

Maid of Honour

The Adhyapana team has launched a new scholarship scheme for students whose parents work as domestic help and cannot afford the education of their children. The scheme is targeted at the urban poor who are often neglected and who need help to educate their children. We have come across a number of single mothers whose children are unable to attend english medium schools due to economic constraints.
The Adhyapana trust will fund the complete education of the child which will include the school fees, books and uniform costs.We have currently identified 4 students who will immediately benefit from this scheme.
Donations towards this initiative are welcome.Anybody interested in sponsoring any part of a child's education can contact us through our email id.

Ethics

After a lot of postponement we finally conducted a class on Ethics for the students of Katalyst last Sunday.This was a tough class to plan for us as a team;As much as we understand the importance of the topic, we were also skeptical about whether we can make such a class interesting and whether the students would be able to easily relate to what we were saying.

The idea was to not have another moral science class where everyone just gets bored. We planned instead to discuss ethics through case studies.We selected a number of interesting cases on ethical dilemmas from different domains such as education, NGO sector and consumer affairs and encouraged the students to come up with various ways to solve the dilemma. this proved to be an effective way to discuss various similar situations in our everyday life and how we need to ethically handle them.

The most interesting part of the class was the sharing of our personal experiences on the topic. We were able to discuss our Adhyapana experiences and how we selected those alternatives that were ethical but did not make business sense.Mahalakshmi shared her experience about the day to day activities in Katalyst and why ethics is very important to her. Many students discussed their own experiences.There were some discussions on ethics in student life and why it is wrong to use another person's work and not give due credit.

We wound up the class with some ways in which we can identify which alternative is ethical. We also discussed to need to prioritize and the need to give ethics the highest priority. We hope that the class has had some positive impact on the students and that they would be able to take decisions keeping ethics in mind.

Nokia lends a helping hand

Nokia Helping Hands and the Diversity and Inclusion Team of Nokia chose to donate to the Adhyapana Trust as a part of their International Women's Day celebration on March 8th. A number of stalls and activities were arranged in the Nokia campus on this occasion. The proceeds of the sale was then contributed to us. We thank Nokia for this noble gesture.This donation will be utilized for our initiatives in the domain of Girl child education.

Adhyapana goes rural

Earlier this year we started a new rural focus program. under this scheme we offered to conduct free training programs for rural students provided the college offered to give us the required teaching infrastructure, and took care of the travel, stay and food during the training period. VDRIT, Haliyal is the first college where we have been able to impart the placement training program under this scheme.

Though we have been visiting many rural colleges near Bangalore, this is also the first college for us in North Karnataka.Haliyal is situated at about 30kms away from Dharwad.

Nearly 100 students from the 8th semester attended the training. it was a challenge to manage such a large number of students that too from different branches.the day started with breakfast with the principal.Over breakfast we discussed various topics including the college's efforts to provide opportunities to rural students, and the need for collaboration to take the initiative forward.

The training sessions was formally inaugurated by the principal and the placement officer.The day was packed with technical and non-technical sessions.Each day would start at 9 and continue till 6 in the evening. Over the 3 days we covered most of what we had planned.The students and staff of the college were very hospitable. they took care of all our needs and we had a wonderful time teaching them.

The soft-skills training was well received, with heated group discussions and good interactions. The students looked forward to the technical and aptitude training. they learnt a lot of new tricks and short cuts during the courses. the feedback at the end of the course was also very satisfying with the average course rating at a healthy 3.3 on a scale of 4. surprisingly group discussions emerged as the favorite session with a average rating of 3.68.

The training concluded with a short presentation about us and our initiatives. The principal presented us with momentoes and a generous donation towards the Adhyapana Trust fund.We hope to visit many more rural colleges this year and help more and more students in real need.

Goal Setting

An article on Goal Setting written by Shiva has appeared in the Educational supplement of the Deccan Herald today(25/2/2010). The article discusses the need for goal setting and how students should go about this activity.The entire article can be found in the following link:

http://www.deccanherald.com/content/54583/make-smart-choice.html

Doctored!!

We had a very unique opportunity this weekend. On Saturday,the Adhyapana Team was invited to conduct a training session for Homeopathy Doctors as a part of their ongoing AYUSH trainings.It was a wonderful experience. There were nearly 30 doctors from different parts of the state.Teaching a meture audience is a different ball-game altogether.

Prof. Rajamani,an eminenet sociologist had already conducted a few sessions for the doctors. I decided to organize my session around the topic of communication skills for doctors and the need to indulge in leasure activities.The morning session was conducted by Dr.Latha, where she spoke about her experiences with taking Homeopathy to the villages. She also discussed a lot of interesting case studies.

My session started after the coffee break. I was really nervous as to how the session will be received by the audience. however they whole-hartedly indluged in all the activities. We had lively discussions with the doctors relating to what i was saying with examples in their real life.We broke for lunch.

After a heavy lunch, the session continued with some more activities,.It was surprising to see the doctors indulge in all the activities and games with so much enthusiasm.They were more lively than normal college students. We wrapped up the session with a discussion on the need for hobbies. Prof.Rajamani then proceeded to explain about working in teams , leadership and time management. Overall it was a great learning experience for us. This was also the first time i was conducting a workshop for adults and i really enjoyed it.

-Shiva

Adhyapana Team at the CSR Conclave

The Adhyapana Team attended a CSR Meet at Anekal organized by Erin Foundation on the 31st of January 2010. The meet was chaired by Martin chairman of the CSR company, Austria and Task Group Leader within ISO for the writing of the ISO 26 000 standard on Social Responsibility. We left Bangalore on Saturday evening to Usha Kirana, the training facility of Erin Foundation, situated near Pearl valley, surrounded by lush greenery. The ride was an enjoyable experience through the newly inaugurated elevated highway connecting Bangalore and electronic city.

On Saturday evening, all of us met over dinner and bonfire and discussed the agenda for the next day's meeting. The Meet started early on Sunday morning. In the first two sessions Martin explained, the meaning of CSR(Corporate social responsibility), the need for CSR,what constitutes CSR etc. Through various examples he explained how an organization must approach CSR.He pointed out that Social responsibility actually encompassed a lot of activities such as responsibility towards environment, labor issues, ethics in operation etc..
He went on to explain how these are encompassed into the new ISO standard to ensure that all companies implement social responsibility.

After Martin's session, which included some heated discussions, we moved on to presentations by individual organizations about their activities.We had some interesting presentations from Karuna trust regarding their extensive work in health care and tribal people. We too presented our work which was well appreciated by all present. We then got to hear about the CSR activities at Tech. Mahindra and how doctors started a free clinic for the uninsured in America. The meeting concluded with a wrap up session by Martin.

The meet was a wonderful opportunity for us to learn more about social responsibility. We understood the working of other organizations . The meet exposed us new perspectives and valuable experience.

Role Play

In our second class of advanced communication skills, we decided to introduce some more fun into the class. We split the class into teams of 5 students each and ask them to enact a scene from everyday life. The students were given a hour to come up with a 5 -10 minute act.

Exactly after an hour we started with the role-plays.Various topics were chosen by different teams.Surprisingly many teams centered their act around social messages. topics varied from property disputes to anti-social elements in society.The winning portrayed the problems faced by 2 Indians in a foreign country.

The students thoroughly enjoyed themselves.Some were natural actors while for many other it was their first acting stint.However the learning from the activity were many.

The students were out of their comfort zone and were still able to perform well. This helped boost their confidence and reduced stage fear.

This was an attempt to provide the students with the opportunity to organize themselves into a working team. The students took the responsibility to come up with the topics for the act, the dialogues, roles, etc.

More importantly it was a great learning with respect to time management.To manage all this in under an hour was indeed a great achievement.

The students learnt the importance of team work, the different situations that they might encounter when working in a team, how to manage dominating people, how to guide a team to success etc.

Overall it was a very pleasurable experience for all of us. We enjoyed ourselves a lot and were glad that this new way of learning to communicate was well appreciated by everyone.

Effective Communication Skills 1

We have just finished a class of Effective communication skills for the students of Katalyst.This was a fun-filled training.The students are in their semester vacation and we felt that the best way to enhance their communication skills was through activities.

On the first day we provided the students with all the required stationery and asked them to come up with a presentation on any topic of their choice.The students were given approximately an hour to plan their activities .We allowed then to form their own groups and plans.The only condition was that every member of the group must speak during the presentation.The raw materials included chart paper, sketch pens and crayons.

We were amazed at the different topics chosen and the creativity exhibited by the students.The topics ranged from recession and its effects to Natural Farming to Call centers.Surprisingly each team presented for atleast 5 minutes and had distributed the responsibilities well.The activity was also a lesson in planning and time management. Many teams planned for nearly 45 minutes and then had to prepare the presentation in the remaining 15 minutes.The activity also exposed the students to team work and its pros and cons.

Judging the presentation was a very difficult task with most presentations being very good.We finally selected a presentation on call centers for its creativity and presentation skills.The feedback for the activity was very encouraging with the students suggesting that it helped them overcome their stage fear and increased confidence in their presentation capabilities.
We are now looking forward to next class of communication skills where we intend to try another new activity.

Dream Job

An article about finding the right job written by Samarth appeared in the Educational supplement of the Deccan Herald on 7th January 2010.The article discusses how to identify the right job and what should students do to find a job of their liking.The complete article can be found in the following link:-
http://www.deccanherald.com/content/45288/land-right-job-keep-it.html