Mumbai, July 2020: Pehlay Akshar Foundation, an NGO founded by Radha Goenka, Director of RPG Foundation, works under the aegis of the RPG Group. Recently, Pehlay Akshar launched a campaign “A Story a Day” to support learning for children from low-income backgrounds from across the country. The campaign aims to continue learning via simple English stories for these children who are currently out of school during this pandemic.
According to UNESCO’s estimate, nearly 321 million children (most of these from government schools) are out of school in India. The campaign encourages a heterogeneous mix of volunteers to read and record simple English stories and impact as many children as possible. Eminent personalities such as Sonakshi Sinha, Sunil Gavaskar, Ajinkya Rahane and Mayank Agarwal have supported this campaign by reading stories for these children. Currently, the initiative has a bank of 200+ stories within a month of its inception.
Pehlay Akshar Foundation has partnered with Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) and Nashik Municipal Corporation (NMC) and has successfully reached out to 1.5 Lakh children so far. Furthermore, they have also received support from Akash Patel – TPEO, Halol, Gujarat and Hingna and Nagpur Panchayat Samiti, Nagpur, in response to this initiative. RPG Group companies such as CEAT, KEC and Zensar are also supporting Pehlay Akshar’s campaign as their CSR initiative.
Pehlay Akshar Foundation is engaging with children through their existing government partnerships, parent-teacher WhatsApp Groups, their YouTube Channel, and Facebook page. The Foundation is also exploring partnerships with national television and radio channels to promote this campaign nationally.
Radha Goenka, Founder, Pehlay Akshar Foundation says, “We are delighted to gain the support of renowned personalities such as Sonakshi Sinha, Sunil Gavaskar, Ajinkya Rahane and Mayank Agarwal. Our cause is to teach children English in a fun and interactive manner through the joy of storytelling. We have received overwhelming participation so far and are looking forward to taking this campaign to every household. We hope that more celebrated personalities come forward thereby encouraging people to volunteer for this cause. Helping students continue learning during the lockdown is a small gesture of us giving back to the larger community. We are also working on partnering with other States to help as many children as we can.”