Life lessons for students after school REPUBLICA EduLift is an after school program to help students develop relevant life skills. Founded by Tenzin Sonam Gonsar, the project was launched on December 15 last year with 50 students each from management and science streams of grades 11 and 12 from schools in Jorpati, Bouddha and Chabahil area. Tenzin has lived in the United States and Canada for eleven years and the 30-year-old has a Master’s degree in Organizational Psychology from Columbia University. He spoke with Republica’s Pramila Rai about the project and what he hopes to offer to students in Nepal. What is the idea behind EduLift? At EduLift, we believe in rethinking education. We believe our current education system has to be re-invented, re-thought and re-defined. The essence of our work is to introduce holistic and experiential learning with direct impact on real-life situations. We introduce innovative and practical approaches to education so that our beneficiaries are prepared not for exams but to deal with day to day complex but real problems. In short, we are rooted in the creativity, collaborative and the continuity aspects of learning. What struck you about this initiative in the beginning? When I moved back to Nepal, I spent a lot of time interacting with many young people here. I quickly came to realize that these young people were not prepared with the right skills and mindsets needed in today’s changing world. Even the so called “top” students I spoke with, who had secured distinction marks in their SLC and +2 examinations, seemed to only be “smart” in the bookish sense. These young people lacked practical life skills like that of communication, technology and critical thinking that are very important in life. So, I decided to plan a program to fill in the gaps of the current education system in Nepal. What kind of courses do you offer at EduLift? The core courses at EduLift are Career Counseling and Life-skills Training (Entrepreneurship & Technology). For the management students, we also offer a course on Current Affairs while for science students, we have Practical Science. All these classes are conducted Sunday through Wednesday. On Thursdays, we have our Weekly Speaker Series where we bring in influential and credible achievers to present an hour long talk after which students are encouraged to network, build contacts, and also seek internship/mentorship opportunities. Our courses are designed with the primary objective of preparing students for life ahead. For instance, through our career-counseling curriculum for our first intake (December 15, 2013 to March 13, 2014), the focus was on applying for higher studies and gaining insight into internship and interview preparations. In our Entrepreneurship class, students learnt skills to turn their passion into reality. Is there a reason why the courses are for high school students only? Is it not better if students have a grasp of practical education when they are still in school? While we believe that impactful education is better if injected into students as early as possible, high school students are in this crucial phase where they will soon be entering into higher studies or the work force. These are also students who have most probably never received any formal guidance and career counseling or concrete life-skill trainings. So, we decided that this was where we could have most immediate positive impact given a limited time frame. Have you tied up with educational institutions to help in enrollment? This first year, we mainly targeted local schools but we will be expanding our reach through time. We have collaborated with ChangeFusion Nepal, a non-profit organization promoting social entrepreneurship in Nepal. How do you keep track of the effectiveness of the courses on students? We regularly survey our students to get their feedback. Just recently, we conducted our Student Satisfaction Survey in which 100% of our students rated our program as “extremely beneficial” or “beneficial.” We use such survey methods, student focus groups and interviews to constantly improve our program. Are you offering anything for people of other age groups? We are also attempting to evolve our facility into an educational hub in addition to continually running our after-school educational program. So we have various activities such as basic English courses for little monks from a nearby monastery to IT classes for the general public. In essence, ‘think globally, act locally’ is a motto we firmly believe and practice. What are some of the future plans? We are soon to launch our second intake from mid April which will be a 2 month intensive bridge course for SLC students. Soon after, we are also in the planning phase of introducing our program in a more advanced level to undergraduates. EduLift is currently raising money to replace their borrowed generator with solar power. The crowd sourcing fundraising initiative will help students study well in a peaceful environment. To help, log on to indiegogo/projects/re-thinking-education-in-nepal. Published on 2014-03-15 10:42:0
Posted on: Sat, 15 Mar 2014 13:40:01 +0000
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