About Antal Force For Good

Force For Good is another direction of Antal Charity Foundation operation where the main aim is to support and engage more volunteers for nonfinancial help for impoverished and disadvantaged children of third world countries.

Now Force For Good cooperate with Indian Education Centre Akanksha but we are intending to support and other similar projects.

Our mission is support impoverished children not only financially, but with care and attention.

“Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish and you have fed him for a lifetime” Old Chinese Saying

We are looking for individuals who believe in the power of education to transform lives and have the passion and commitment to work with children. Volunteers do not need prior experience in teaching. Volunteers are taken through a training session before they start working with children. Apart from that volunteers also have access to the team in the office for any further assistance.

About Akanksha Foundation

The Akanksha Foundation

The Akanksha Foundation is a non-profit organization that provides high quality education to children from low-income communities through after school centers and schools. The after school centers provide supplementary education to the children, bridging the gaps that exist in their formal school education. In a country where only 10% of children complete standard 10th, over 90% of Akanksha graduates have completed their schooling and are studying in some of the best colleges in Mumbai such as Sophia, Sydenham, Wilson, Ruparel, JJ School of Arts. An Akanksha alumnus recently got admission into one of the premiere business schools in Mumbai.

The School Project is a partnership with the municipal governments of Mumbai and Pune that seeks to build a cluster of high-performing municipal schools that redefines what is possible for these children. Akanksha currently runs seven schools in these two cities, where the government provides the infrastructure and the school staff is recruited and trained by Akanksha. With the effective management of these schools, Akanksha hopes to bring about transformation in three major areas of education. The first is to prove that every child has the ability to learn and achieve at high levels. The second is to demonstrate the importance of skilled educators by investing the majority of the school’s resources into recruitment and retention of high-quality school staff. The last, long-term objective is to effect systemic reform by using these schools as learning laboratories to improve the quality of education in municipal and low- fee private schools around the country.

Akanksha’s vision is that one day all children will be equipped with the education, skills and characters they need to lead empowered lives. Towards this vision, Akanksha will be opening three more schools in 2011 bringing the total number of Akanksha schools to 10. By 2013, Akanksha aims to open 15 schools that will at full capacity serve nearly 10000 children.

Akanksha firmly believes that the most important factor to bring about a systemic reform and make an impact in the children’s lives is quality teachers and therefore seeks to recruit committed and passionate people who are ready to become leaders in education.

Role of an Akanksha Teacher

Every Akanksha teacher is directly responsible for 30 kids in a class. The teacher’s role is to guide the students towards academic achievement while inculcating self esteem and values that empower them to think critically and make informed choices leading them to transform their lives.

The teachers cultivate an environment of high achievement coupled with fun learning in the classrooms. They build strong bonds with the children to understand each child’s needs and with the parents. They understand the communities the children come from, the background of each child and the challenges they face every day. Despite this they keep excellence a top priority and empathize rather than sympathize with the kids to push them even harder as they believe in each child’s potential.

The teachers understand that to create an impact on every child, they need to create instructional plans to each child’s needs and deliver instructions in an engaging manner as well as administer assessments to ensure that students are progressing. The teachers ensure that while the learning levels of the students may be different, they are all moving towards meeting the academic goal.

The teachers are leaders of their classrooms as they work within teams to ensure that they are maximizing everyone’s potential. They work with co-teachers to ensure they are setting smart goals, manage a group of volunteers to give support to each child, supervise the helpers to ensure smooth running at the center, interact with the social worker to address any issue in the child’s house affecting them, communicate with the parents to include them in the learning process and work with the administrative team to ensure they are always moving towards the common goal.

Training and Support

Akanksha recruits individuals who have the belief, commitment to excellence and perseverance towards the vision of the organization. Akanksha then has a robust training and support system that builds and advances the skills required for teaching.

Pre Service Training - Teacher Training Institute
Prior to the start of the academic year, Akanksha runs a month long teacher training institute to induct new teachers, develop fundamentals of teaching and refresh concepts for returning teachers while giving them fresh tools to deal with a variety of situations in their classrooms.

Residential Training: The first part of the Teacher Training Institute is a residential component where all new teachers are brought together for a residential, full time training. This component aims at inducting teachers into the mission, vision, philosophy and culture of Akanksha.

Education Convention: The second part of the Teacher Training Institute is attended by new as well as returning teachers at Akanksha. This gives the teachers a chance to meet and get to know their entire teams that they would be working closely with. The aim of the education convention is to equip teachers with technical tools to enable them to be excellent teachers in their classrooms.

Practical Training: Post the education convention, the new teachers are exposed to different classroom situations in order to prepare them for actual teaching. During this period, the teachers have the opportunity to observe other teachers in action in their classrooms and have debrief sessions post the observations. After a week of observations, the teachers then start teaching in their own classrooms.

In Service Training

Becoming effective teachers is a continuous process of reflection, learning and honing of skills. Akanksha regularly provides opportunities to teachers for their professional development. The teachers get the opportunity to interact with and learn from various experienced practitioners. Various outbound trainings are also provided to the teachers where they have the chance to visit other organizations and learn from them.

Support and Mentorship

Every teacher has a mentor who essentially acts as a support and guide, coaching them with their initial struggles in the classrooms, helping them plan effectively, modeling lessons for them, pushing them to set high targets for their students, motivating them through the tough times and being there for them at all times. Akanksha understands that teaching is a difficult job and endeavors to provide that support to all its teachers.
Location: Mumbai and Pune

Medium of Instruction: English

Subjects: English / Math. All subjects for primary section

Timings: Full Time / Part Time

Remuneration: Rs.15000-20000 for full time

Volunteer Diary

The next step

"What's next?" After more than three exciting years at Antal's Moscow office, and the upcoming graduation from a master’s programme, I had to find an answer to this question – not for the first time in my life. Yet, this time I was eager to do something good in a charity before returning to ordinary work life. I went online to see what opportunities are out there and encountered numerous organisations which provide a month or so placement, visa support and basic accommodation in a shared room. They charge around 800 euro – no air tickets included! I was totally willing to do volunteer work but without draining my bank account. A fellow student from India told me about Akanksha - an Indian charity organisation, proaviding education to underprivileged children in Mumbai and Pune. After getting in touch with them via e-mail I was offered the opportunity to volunteer. I sorted out the rest myself: visa, transfer, vaccinations, insurance, accommodation and eventually left for India in September 2010.

Welcome to India

After a long flight I arrived early morning in Mumbai - India's vibrant metropolis at the coast of the Arabian Sea. Hot, humid and full of honking cars and an incredible 27,000 inhabitants per square km, I somehow felt confirmed about my decision to spend my time in cozy Pune, 3 hours by car from Mumbai. Pune is the Detroit of India - home to numerous domestic and foreign car manufacturers - and with 3 million people slightly more manageable than Mumbai.
I went to Akanksha’s Pune office after my first weekend and met a friendly and committed team that coordinates the work of numerous teachers, social workers, volunteers and - in the centre of all activities – the education of the children. A professional introduction has been put in place to welcome volunteers. It was exciting to find out about the organisation’s objectives but most striking for me was the person who gave me the introduction session: Pooja, a 19 year old girl, is an Akanksha alumni who made her way from Patil Estate – a socially deprived part in the south of Pune. In excellent English she told me about the organisation's policy and objectives and even more impressively about her own way. She attended Akanksha’s after school programme for 10 years and graduated from her formal school about a year ago. Pooja is now studying at MMCC College of Commerce and works part-time in Akanksha's HR department. After quite a few presentations which I've seen in my life I was not only impressed with the things she told me but also with her very professional approach. “After my graduation I am going to pursue a mass media communication course at the University of Pune and then I will do my MBA.” - A young girl with a lot of potential.

Contradictory neighbourhoods

Everyone who has been to India will tell you about poor environmental conditions, crowded roads and above all about the fact that rich and poor live such different lives in close proximity. Two parallel societies with world-class engineers, hungry entrepreneurs, IT specialists literally on the one side of the road and people with nothing more than asphalt shelter on the other side. However, what they share is their country's diversity of people, cultures, religions and an understanding of being part of the biggest democracy on the planet.
One may think that education is a prerequisite of this democracy but India lacks a comprehensive level of quality education for everyone. A lot of inherent problems of the education system cause disadvantageous conditions for many children. This is the reason why parents send their kids to private schools where teachers actually show up, are motivated and try to provide quality education. The need for quality education has even led to a spurt of low – income private schools around the slum communities, giving a chance for slightly better education to children whose parents aren’t too bad off. Yet, what do the poorest of the poor do? This is where Akanksha joins in the game. With learning centres in community houses, class rooms of government schools and premises at partnering companies, Akanksha tries to fill the huge gaps that exist in the government school education system.
Social workers, like Javahar, 26, go into the communities and identify families who live at the minimum but show the eagerness to improve their children’s future. Javahar gives the children and their parents a full picture of Akanksha’s objectives, the curriculum and encourages them to attend classes every single day of the week, from the age of six up until they are sixteen. Javahar and his dedicated colleagues stay in constant contact with the children and their parents, visit them at their homes and keep them informed about progress, and often trouble shoot different issues.
Amongst Hindi and 22 other official languages in India, English is a highly important requirement to embark on any higher career, either in the service, business or education sector. Furthermore, Indians are driven by the ability to have access to the vast knowledge available in English on the World Wide Web. Whereas in Western Europe your chances to find a job without fluency in English are still fairly good, it seems almost impossible in India.
Apart from building skills in English and maths, Akanksha focuses on the development of social values, which primarily includes resolving problems verbally rather than by fists or knife, keeping the personal surroundings and the community clean and treating women and girls equally, and enabling them to realise their full potential. What seems to be a basis of a functioning modern society is often lacking in these social strata. Akanksha's idea is that if one child receives quality education and adopts a high set of social values it will transfer this to its community and thus create an impact on much wider level.

Challenges and rewards of teaching Akanksha kids

I was assigned to two learning centres in different parts of Pune where I was supporting teachers during their 2.5 hours lessons. Working at Akanksha at a day-to-day basis means to handle a group of 25-30 curious students who are full of energy, want to be kept busy constantly and, as other children too, try to test out their teachers' patience – most likely an unsuitable job for people suffering from high blood pressure. The day to day work will require you to go back to your own school days and teach elementary school math and English. Teaching in small groups and conducting assessments are part of the job as well as accompanying the children at out-of-routine events, for instance to the medical check up which is done once a year to check their general health condition. In addition to that, there are many more activities after school and on weekends including sports and art workshops.
What impressed me most is that the children were extremely positive. Coming from a society where consumption is an integral part of life and parents more and more seem to buy the happiness of their loved ones, I was overwhelmed that children, who definitely do not own a lot, come up with a big smile every day and spread around a lot of positive energy.
A hilarious moment was when an 8-year old girl was sitting next to me to take a one-to-one maths exam. “What's 4 + 4 + 15?”, I asked her. She was supposed to do the calculation in her head but used her fingers instead and slowly counted “eight – nine – ten”. Since it is common for everyone to walk around bare foot in this learning centre - including myself - she continued counting on her toes. However, when reaching 20 she faced an insufficient number of fingers and toes she decided to further count up to 23 on my toes. What an innovative mind!
Another time the children had to construct sentences with a set of given words, including 'dwarf'. One girl came up to me to check her work. “Sanjeevani is a little dwarf.” I asked her who Sanjeevani was. She answered it was her cousin, pointing at an admittedly tiny girl in the group who is only six years old. Little Sanjeevani looked at me with big eyes and an even bigger question mark above her head when I started laughing. I felt the need to explain again what a dwarf is and said that her cousin is very likely to grow and won't stay a metre for the rest of her life.
Akanksha is a non-profit organisation and is funded by donations and partnerships with Indian and foreign companies. Apart from donations, the backbone of the organisation are the teachers and volunteers who come from different backgrounds and are all united by the intention to contribute their efforts to a worthy cause. I volunteered for a month and enjoyed the experience very much. What's in for you? You will have the chance to make a direct impact on the lives of adorable children who will welcome you with lots of questions and open arms. You will be rewarded with an insight into a totally different culture – with different customs, music, food and views on life. There is no fear of contact, you will be taken right into Indian life and only realise what you’re actually in after several weeks. Of course, you will see a lot of sad things in India: families who live in totally run down areas, children playing in dirty puddles, old people begging for food. Yet, the experience will widen your view on life. In addition to that, Pune, being in relatively close proximity to lively Mumbai, surrounded by splendid nature, and an overnight bus away from famous Goa, will offer you sufficient weekend activities.
Whenever you have to find an answer to “What’s next?” you might consider devoting some of your time and enriching your life and the lives of the children at Akanksha. I would be delighted to see more people volunteering short or long term. The Antal Charitable Foundation and myself can help you taking away some of the organisational hassle and provide you with local contacts, help with accommodation, transfers, and advice on how to settle in. If you would like to find out more, feel free to contact me on goy.chr@gmail.com.

Q&A

Who can be a volunteer?

Volunteers in Akanksha come from diverse backgrounds - students, housewives, engineers, doctors, MBAs and just about any field. Volunteers need not have any prior experience but we look for individuals who believe in the power of education to transform lives and have the passion and commitment to work with children. English is a prerequisite for classroom teaching. Fluency in the English language is a pre-requisite to be an Akanksha volunteer as the medium of instruction in our centres and schools in English.
People interested in volunteering for more than six months, should be ready to attend classes 2 – 3 hours per week. For people who are interested in short-term volunteering, i.e. one to six months, the requirement is to take part 5 days a week for about 2 – 3 hours a day. This will give you, the children and the teachers sufficient time to get to know each other and achieve a real impact.

What does a volunteer do?

The Akanksha volunteer works directly with the children assisting the Akanksha teachers. Each Akanksha teacher is responsible for a group of 30 children. The volunteer’s role is to help the teacher conduct these classes, work with smaller groups of children, support the teacher with various kinds of resources. One of the gaps that volunteers help fill in a classroom is individualized attention to children – more adults in the classroom immensely helps with student learning. Volunteers also bring with them a vast pool of knowledge from different fields and are able to expose the children to many different things

Do I need to know the local language to volunteer at Akanksha?

The medium of instruction in Akanksha centres and schools is English. Volunteers only need to be fluent in English to be able to work with us.

I don’t have a background in teaching, can I still volunteer? Is there training for volunteers?

Volunteers do not need prior experience in teaching. Volunteers are taken through a training session before they start working with children. Apart from that volunteers also have access to the team in the office for any further assistance

How much time commitment is required to volunteer at Akanksha?

The Akanksha foundation insists on volunteers spending quality time with the children. Working with children requires a person to build a rapport with them before the children start feeling comfortable. The process takes time and therefore it is imperative for volunteers to be consistent and committed.

If an individual plans to stay with us for more than half a year, then the minimum expectation is volunteering for 2 – 3 hours once a week. For people who are available for only a month this requirement would be volunteering consistently 5 days a week for about 2-3 hours.
We do not take volunteers who would be available for less than a month’s time as it is too little time to have any real impact in the classroom.

What are the different volunteering options other than assisting teachers in classrooms?

Individuals with specialized skills in computers, HR, sports or art can assist the office teams at Akanksha.

How do I get from Mumbai Airport to Pune?

We do have contacts to a local travel agency. The driver will personally pick you up at the airport. The car ride takes about 3 hours depending on the day and time of travelling. The driver will drop you off at a pre-determined destination.

How do I find accommodation?

There are many real estate agencies in Pune. We have established contacts to a German national who professionally provides accommodation to employees of international corporations. She has been living and working in India for many years and delivers quality accommodation of different levels. We will set up the contact for you as soon as you have decided to volunteer.

How do I get around in Pune?

Auto-Riskhaw is the easiest and cheapest way to get around. You pay the driver by meter or agree on a price at nighttime. It is also the best mean of transport to get to Akanksha’s learning centres which are located in different parts of the town.
If you are tough enough to take on Indian urban traffic, you can also rent a scooter on a monthly basis.

What vaccinations do I need?

We strongly recommend to consult your physician for the latest recommendations. In general we advise to go for the following vaccinations: Hepatitis A and B, Typhoid, Polio, Japanese Encephalitis, rabies,
MMR (Measles, Mumps, Rubella), Tetanus-Diphtheria.

What other health hazards do exist?

The most common trouble caused to foreigners is diarrhea that is mainly caused by unclean food and water. Yet, paying attention to hygienic standards of the locations where you eat and buy food, will avoid major problems. Carrying anti diarrhea drug if significant problems occur. If diarrhea gets serve you should promptly contact a doctor.

Malaria can occur especially at monsoon times. The risk can be reduced by preventing mosquito bites by using insect repellents and mosquito nets. Doctors will offer you prophylaxis solutions or will provide you with medications for emergency self-treatment. Still, Pune and Mumbai are well-developed cities with no shortage of qualified doctors and medical centres.

If you have any further questions do not hesitate to contact Mansi at Akanksha in Pune (mansi.nikhal@akanksha.org) or Christian (goy.chr@gmail.com).