They say ‘India lives in villages”. 70-75% of Indian population is constituted by rural areas. So to say realistically, there is a lot of ground to cover before we can dream about a cent percent literate India.

Team Umang is extremely focused and keen to make difference in areas related to education, “Promote Education”, “

” are couple of on-going education focused projects of Umang Foundation.

Name "Gurukul" was coined by Mr Bipin Joshi, an Umang Volunteer working with an renowned corporate in Mumbai.

Concept

“Gurukul” is an age old concept which all of us has been hearing about or has experienced it in some form or the other while we grew up. In many ways, Umang Foundation’s “Gurukul” is no different. The underlying fundamentals and principles remains the same but it can be undeniably added here that the concept has lost its footing over the years and its impact has diluted.
Team Umang has taken up the task to revive this customary ancient methodology of teaching for the benefit of the financially and academically weaker students of our society.
Team Umang has conceptualized “Gurukul” with two goals in mind viz., primary one being that it endeavors to identify financially challenged students and provide academic assistance and the secondary being a dream to revive the age old “guru – shishya” forgotten tradition where there was a respect and culture lived in the root of the tradition. The conceptualized model is that each Umang-Gurukul volunteer would be dedicated to attend 3-4 students at a time and assist them in overcoming the difficulties. Umang-Gurukul volunteer will also be responsible to closely monitor the progress of the student.

Implementation

Team Umang has reached out to a school in Thane as the starting point to pilot this project. The school and its staff had co-operated liberally to identify not only the weaker students but also enabled Team Umang understand the areas in which the students were lagging. Interactions with the school staff imparted the volunteers of Team Umang to gauge the needs/requirements of the students, strategy to be adopted and last but not the least offered a golden start to begin the dream project for Umang Foundation.

Progress

On the occasion of completing three years of extremely successful events / activities / operations, Umang Foundation launched this flagship project "Gurukul". Gurukul went live from February 04, 2012 with a community survey, then on March 05, 2012 - the curtain raiser was a 'Drawing Competition' organized by Team Umang in the school premises as a warm up which was well received and witnessed students being present in impressive numbers.
Once the ice was broken, there was no looking back for Team Umang. Gurukul classes went live from March 10, 2012 and Team Umang has conducted four classes in the month of March 2012 on “Gurukul” principles for the identified academically weaker and financially challenged children. The project has received an overwhelming response from the students and teachers of the school.
Once this maiden center gathers momentum, Team Umang is ambitious to expand its wings to create a chain of such centers. So, clearly the message is that this project is an extremely focused, one which will go a long way to touch the lives of many students facing academic hitches.

As an extension of this project, Team Umang was also instrumental in facilitating 6 schools in different locations of Ulhasnagar - Dist. Thane to setup 22 computer systems for its students. These schools have been identified with the baseline thought i.e. students are economically deprived and from slum background where mothers are house-maids and fathers are daily wagers. These schools receives limited grant from government where computer and computer education is not provided.
As always, Team Umang walks another path to live its belief - there’s more to life…

Ongoing Projects

1. Gurukul Thane (Classroom Teaching)
2. Gurukul Ulhasnagar (Computer Education)
If you wish to be a part of Gurukul, please fill your nominations Click Here