NEEV is a five-year-old community engagement club at Ashoka University in India. According to its current executives, NEEV was established in order to build a community between Ashoka University and its neighboring village
Ashoka University is an establishment at the Rajiv Gandhi education city in Sonepat, Haryana-India; a piece of land once owned by the villagers around it who lived there for centuries. According to NEEV, it was essential to bridge the gap between the university and village community in order to maintain a good relationship with the village and ensure an equal status between the two communities.
At NEEV, the club officials and children learn from each other. NEEV conducts numerous activities with these children aimed towards broadening their knowledge and familiarizing them with concepts within their school syllabus.
So how do they get these students?
Induction; at the beginning of every semester, the NEEV team visits the village and collects names, ages, and phone numbers of interested children. About 50-60 interested children then report to the Ashoka Campus on the first day of the academic semester; usually in the afternoon and get their attendance checked at the gate. Important to mention that some of these children are parented by Ashoka’s staff members who specialize in security, laundry, cleaning and cooking services within the University premises. For this reason, the students and parents are well acquainted with the initiative.
The Learning process
The NEEV curriculum teaches through various activities such as the arts, dance, skits, and conversational, formal content such as language skills, computers and the sciences. The study material is often broken down into simpler components which run all through the week. This enhances the students’ ability to comprehend and synthesize the content.
At NEEV, Mondays comprise of an introduction to a specific subject matter. Tuesdays always come with a new idea aimed towards complicating Monday's subject matter in order to enhance the students’ critical thinking abilities. Wednesdays are for small-group peer mentorships where these students get to discuss what they learn; usually a small group of three young students and a NEEV moderator. Thursdays are for computer and art programs while Fridays are free fun days for play-dates, skits, dance and so much more.
But COVID has changed a lot of things
In response to the pandemic, NEEV’s determination to keep working with the children forced them to move onto online platforms like YouTube where they focus on doing two things;
1. Bonanza videos – videos which teach talent, feature special guests amongst other motivational stories
2. Potpourri Videos – NEEV often brings foreign students into this segment to teach the Hindi students a thing or two about where the foreigners come from.
It is no surprise that all of NEEV’s student candidates are Indian given that the university is located in India. While the village may not have given them immense exposure to the outside world and people of different races, NEEV affords them this opportunity.
The Challenge
You are probably wondering how NEEV is able to ensure each child makes the most of their engagement session given the online shift. And if you are not, I will tell you anyway.
While it was easier to keep an eye out on each student’s comprehension before the pandemic, the current lack of student-teacher personal engagement has made it difficult to assess how each student is growing. This is because some of these students either lack internet connection or smartphones to be able to access NEEV's learning resources.
In order to combat these challenges, the NEEV team has tasked itself with the role of calling these students on a daily basis to help with homework over the phone and monitor their well-being. NEEV also maintains a consistent schedule of posting at least two videos weekly in order to sustain the children’s engagement.
But how does NEEV operate to do all this?
Well, it is ever so imperative to have a well-functioning department for every initiative/project embarked on. For NEEV, these sectors comprise of
1. A teaching department
2. A media team which visually documents lessons and runs their digital platforms
3. An events department in charge of fundraiser to afford some of their students enough tuition
4. Finance department
5. Curriculum department
6. A community engagement department in-charge of interacting with the community where these students come from (the nearby village)
...Maneuvering through Casteism
However, having a well-structured department does not always guarantee a smooth sailing. India is known for casteism and this often affects they way a lot of things operate i.e education, ability to attain freedom, work, speech and so much more. Sexism is another thing which may crop up from time to time.
“We aim not to confuse the child because they only spend 1 hour at Ashoka and 23 hours at home. Our main goal is to teach them how to read and help them make discoveries about sexism, casteism etc on their own. We encourage and practice activities that help them think about some of these issues. For example, it is not so common for some of them to see girls playing football; they will ask why girls are playing football because that is not how they are brought up” - Mukta; Co-Head, NEEV
While it is gravely important to invest in general child education and ensure they comprehend the content of their syllabus, it is also critical to instill immovable morals in them. A ‘why’ is often a good sign as it depicts that the child is thinking about a certain phenomenon and trying to find meaning for its existence. If anything, this simple question attests to the fact that NEEV is indeed fueling immense growth in these students.
In the five years that this community engagement club has functioned, the Asawadpur village students have learnt to trust their Ashoka instructors; establishing a safe space to grow emotionally and mentally. NEEV has managed to offer countless tuition sessions for 10th and 11th grade students as well as raise immeasurable funds to keep some of the students in formal education
“Everybody around you can teach you something. A reason for starting up something does not have to be the quest for some big reality; even something as simple as an engagement brings fulfilment” – Mukta; Co-Head, NEEV
From the Columnist to you;
1. NEEV was formed by young people like you and I. Furthermore, these are University students (freshers, sophomores and seniors) who could have chosen to dedicate their time to anything else. However, investing in this initiative seemed more lucrative. Is there anything you can do for the community around you?
2. The pandemic denied numerous students access to education. You may know a few. How can you help foster their learning?
3. It does not have to be BIG. As the NEEV department states; we don’t always have to do things because we are trying to achieve some big reality. We do not always have to break our backs thinking that everything we do must be a semi-unattainable ambition. Sometimes it can be as simple as just acknowledging the things around you and wanting to be more involved in whatever that is.
NEEV begun as a desire between two different communities to learn from each other. With time, it became more than just a ‘hello, I would like to get to know you’
What the NEEV engagement club means to the rest of the team
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