Page 54 - EducationWorld Oct 2021

People

Inquisitive learning educator have finalised a blueprint to expand
our partner schools network in India
and the Middle-East. Our mission is
urugram-based ANEESH to improve and sharpen the thinking
BANGIA is co-founder of Open skills of 1 million children around
GDoor, an initiative of Think- the world in the next five years,” says
First Education Pvt. Ltd (estb.2013), Bangia.
an edtech company headquartered in Wind in your sails!
Bengaluru which offers K-12 school Paromita Sengupta (Bengaluru)
programmes to leverage the “power
of inquiry to transform young learn- Tribal children’s
ers into curious and better thinkers”.
Open Door has signed up over
200 top-ranked schools in India champion
— (Children’s Academy, Mumbai;
Sulochanadevi Singhania School, ally (Kolkata)-based soft-
Thane; Welham Girls, Dehradun; ware engineer SAPTARSHI
Lakshmipat Singhania Academy, BBAISHYA (25) is founder-pro-
Kolkata; Salwan Public School, moter of the Maitreyo Foundation
Delhi; Chinmaya International Resi- (MF, estb.2019) which runs Maitreyo
dential School, Coimbatore among Bangia: nurturing curious thinkers Paathshala, a learning centre that
others) — the UAE, Kuwait, Oman, provides free-of-charge education to
Bahrain and Qatar. flagship Mastery Assessment pro- children of the Birhor tribe, in Ber-
Newspeg. To celebrate its eighth gramme and successfully completed sha village located in West Bengal’s
anniversary in July, Open Door a pilot project at Pune’s Millennium Purulia district.
launched its Wow Video Series — National School. Newspeg. In January this year, MF
math and science content videos Business model: Under the compa- signed a partnership agreement
featuring hands-on experiments. ny’s business model, partner schools with the state government managed
History. A mechanical engineering pay Open Door an annual per stu- Sidho-Kanho-Birsha University,
alum of IIT-Madras, Bangia quit a dent fee (Rs.790-1,490). Purulia. Under the agreement, fac-
high-potential job at Ashok Leyland Direct talk. “India’s school system ulty and students of the university’s
— India’s second largest commercial places strong emphasis on rote botany department will visit Bersha
vehicles manufacturing company — learning and examination success. village periodically to provide seeds,
within a year of appointment, to turn Thousands of school-leavers are fertilizer and other agricultural re-
edupreneur. “I found my true calling graduating with high grades but sources to Birhor farmers to practise
when I began teaching physics to with little or no real learning. We organic farming. This sustainable
my workplace colleagues who had believe this is because they haven’t development project is funded by
surprisingly limited appreciation or been taught to think and question. the Central government’s Science,
understanding of science,” recalls Schools urgently need to switch to Technology and Innovation (STI)
Bangia, who began teaching children inquiry-based pedagogies. The more initiative to empower India’s tribal
at home and at a test prep centre students question, the deeper their communities.
while fleshing out his entrepreneur- understanding. Open Door teaches Moreover, following a series of
ial plan. children to think deeply, question parleys with state government of-
In 2013, after a chance meeting and learn. Our flagship programmes ficials over the past year, Baishya
with Abhishek Kariwal, a like-mind- Mastery Assessment, and Thinking and his team have negotiated an
ed junior at IIT-Madras, the duo de- Classrooms stimulate the minds of agreement to electrify Bersha village
cided to team up and teach children children with thought-provoking before Durga puja (October 11).
maths and science in rented learning questions which develop critical “Lack of electricity has hampered
centres in Bengaluru and Pune. Their thinking and application skills. Our teaching-learning of first genera-
unconventional, questions-driven other services include teacher train- tion learners in Bersha. It is also the
science and math pedagogies soon ing, workshops on critical reading, primary cause of rampant alcoholism
became popular among forward- concept design and thinkshops,” says in the village. We expect a tangible
looking parents and Open Door was Bangia. life-style change once the village is
registered the same year. The fol- Future plans. Bangia has drawn up powered by electricity,” says Baishya
lowing year, the duo launched their ambitious plans for the future. “We History. An engineering graduate

54 EDUCATIONWORLD OCTOBER 2021