In a bid to enhance teachers’ training in the country and to improve the curriculum content, Google.org, the philanthropic arm of Google, announced 3 million dollars additional grants to two NGOs ~ Central Square Foundation and The Teacher App ~ both working in the education sector.
These new grants are in addition to Google’s existing education projects that were funded last year in India, the technology giant said at a news conference held in the Capital Thursday. Google.org claimed to have expanded the grant pool to 11.4 million dollars to support education and learning efforts in India.
“The success of our existing partners has given us the confidence to expand our efforts in India. We strongly believe that technology can play a powerful part in solving the learning gap in India, and we are expanding our investments in India to ensure that all teachers and students are able to benefit from it,” said Nick Cain, Education Lead, Google.org.
As per the Union Ministry of Human Resource Development (HRD), around 11 lakh teachers in India currently teaching in schools are not properly trained.
According to a World Bank report, around 1.3 lakh schools in India have a single teacher. This 1 million dollar aid to The Teacher App, an NGO working for teacher’s training, will help Indian teachers and empower them with the right training and resources on concepts of math, science, language, and pedagogy, for a more holistic learning experience, company officials said. The funds will be used to scale the platform to reach 500,000 teachers in two years, they added.
Similarly, Google.org, will grant 2 million dollars and technical assistance from the YouTube Learning team to Central Square Foundation. This grant will include support of a minimum of 20 content creators to produce at least 200 hours of quality Science, Technology, Engineering and Math content in Hindi and vernacular languages. “These new funds will help contribute in building more locally-relevant solutions and content for students and teachers,” informed Nick Cain.
Last year, Google.org granted 8.4 million dollars to four Indian NGOs ~ Learning Equality, Million Sparks Foundation, Pratham Books StoryWeaver and Pratham Education Foundation.