Today, the leading businesses and organizations of the world contribute to society not just through their portfolio of solutions and services but also through CSR and philanthropy. In that regard, the Bilakhia Group – one of the emerging business entities in India – has taken great strides in the last three decades through their MAA Foundation initiative.
MAA Foundation is a charitable, not-for-profit organization that was inspired by the ideals of the Bilakhia’s grandmother – Noori Bai Maa. She was a telling figure who taught the Bilakhias the importance of education in the pre-Independence era. MAA Foundation has imbibed her zeal for learning and other maternal ideals such as selflessness, impartiality, and unconditional love to facilitate productive educational reforms in Indian society.
Philanthropy via education
Through the MAA Foundation initiative, the Bilakhia Group has created a unique NGO that strives to solve the most pertinent challenges in the modern Indian education system. The goal is to bring about a large-scale transformation of grassroots education in India, especially in rural and remote regions where world-class education is inaccessible. Hence, the initiative strives to spread the importance of education, improve education standards and create empowered, enlightened youth of tomorrow.
As such MAA Foundation has developed scalable, sustainable, process-driven, and result-oriented educational models that are being easily adopted by various schools and communities across India. Let’s look at some of them below.
Various philanthropy initiatives under Maa Foundation
- Disha: A technology-assisted career testing and counseling project that aims to help students discover and choose their career path. Career talk and online/offline psychometric testing are a part of the project as well.
- Parvarish: A workshop that helps parents learn and incorporate new strategies for enhancing child development.
- Science on Wheels: A fun initiative in which a mobile van tours various schools and communities to spread the concepts of science and mathematics interactively.
- Lakshya: A coaching initiative to train undergraduate students in 21st-century work skills, while also providing them with relevant industry/trade exposure through internships and domain knowledge. The aim is to improve the employability of our youth.
- Unnati: Similar to Lakshya, Unnati focuses on improving the employability of youth. However, it focuses on college dropouts and unemployed, educated individuals between the ages of 18 to 25.
- Prabodhan: A motivational initiative to spark a career-oriented mindset in teenagers and help them decode success, goal setting, and vision.
- Gyan: An initiative to empower teachers with the latest training programs and motivation workshops.
- Vikas: An activity-based training camp for 4-6 days to promote life skills and prepare the youth for real-life scenarios.
- KEN: A powerful initiative for creating role-model primary public schools for better educational outcomes.
- Step-Up: An innovative activity-based teaching method that improves the teaching-learning process. Step-Up involves splitting the curriculum into specific units that can be taught using different activities.
- Vidhya: A scholarship project to assist the most promising and disadvantaged students with financial help.
Conclusion
Since its incorporation in 2005, Bilakhia Group’s MAA Foundation has become a beacon of positive change for the masses, thanks to its efforts towards educational reform. The philanthropy arm of the business entity has been successful in training over 3000 teachers, providing scholarships to 10,000 students, and providing career guidance to 85,000 students. Basic Math, English, and Science Education has been taught to 55,000 children, whereas more than 82,000 students have also received foundational computer education.
0
