From A Corporate Career To Creating Better Opportunities In Public Education Space

Having spent a considerable amount of time in corporate training and people development space, this husband and wife duo decided to bid adieu to their successful corporate careers and move into social development space. This is Binu Verma’s story.

My journey has been an interesting one. I was born and brought up in Delhi. The urge to do something more meaningful and make an impact in the education space led me to quit my corporate job at the peak of my career. I decided to take the untrodden path with Ramesh Balasundaram (my husband).

Ramesh and I were courting each other in 2007 when the idea of working in the Social development space germinated. It all started with discussions about the name and the cause we both wanted to be associated with. Over emails and telephone conversations and post our wedding in February 2009, precisely nine months from the wedding date, Bal Utsav was born. Our first and only child.

It stands for happiness, celebration and hope for the future of tomorrow - our children. And if we want to bring about a change in the system, it can only be brought through by educating the children of today for a better tomorrow.

We decided that any change we want to see can happen only if we work with children, and that’s how we started. Predominantly we envisioned ourselves being as an educational organisation and working with children until 2015 when the Nepal earthquake happened. That’s when we found around 5000+ schools in Nepal had completely gone crashing down, and our foray into disaster response started because of education and children. Since children are the most vulnerable in situations when natural disasters strike, we have developed some of the best practices from across the world for Disaster Response.

Binu Verma

The Struggles

India has 15 lakh schools, out of which 12 lakh are government-run. For the bulk of the Children (~70%) in India, today who attend classes in a Government School, the state of the school leaves much to be desired.

All of our best intentions for the Nation to grow and succeed will come crumbling down when 70% of the Nation’s children go to schools that are severely lacking in Infrastructure, Shortage of Teachers, No mechanism to record and understand Learning Outcomes and Water, Sanitation and Hygiene interventions are unavailable.

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Through our programs we reimagine education for these children and are establishing and operating ‘Model Schools’ for the Children and their families where they are provided with the best resources that schools in India have( and can have) and are making available opportunities to realise their full potential. Education is the best thing you can get out of this world and it's the key to success. There’s no denying that #EducationMakesAllTheDifference

The Successes

We have successfully made a dent in the Public Education Space working with 200 schools, impacting 8,00,000. We have demonstrated that Government Schools can be model schools, where Students, Parents and Communities aspire to send their children to and the other stakeholders are proud to be a part of.

Over the years we are witnessing a change in the outlook of various stakeholders (parents, teachers, students, Education dept. & communities) and are flooded with requests for similar interventions to be made at various schools (within Karnataka & nationally). We are delighted that the focus on strengthening public schools is now a talking point and the various schools where the interventions are currently underway are living up to the idea of what is possible in a government school when sustained and focussed interventions are made.

My story is similar to many others in this sector. Bal Utsav chose to work with Children who are the agents for change and our hope for a better tomorrow.

We believe, if each one of us can take it upon ourselves to educate a child, we can ensure the next generation is gifted with a stronger and more vibrant India. The models we have been working on were conceptualised to replicate and scale-up. This model is available for like-minded individuals and can be adapted to local needs across the globe.

This was the worst moment of my life…

Every day is a challenge and the good news is that it comes with new learnings.

Being a Social Entrepreneur comes with immense responsibility towards the beneficiaries. There are situations where you have a solution but no support, that is when the chance of losing hope and getting distracted is high.

Lack of availability of resources for the cause can be a roadblock, however, when the dedication towards your beneficiaries is unwavering, support flows uninhibited.

Being a Social Entrepreneur comes with immense responsibility towards the beneficiaries. There are situations where you have a solution but no support, that is when the chance of losing hope and getting distracted is high.

What next for me?

We want to continue to demonstrate what is possible in the public education space and build a positive narrative around the same and also work alongside the Government to adopt models to strengthen public education.

We would like to start with a 10% coverage of each State (About 3 Districts in Karnataka of the 31) and expand to similar coverage in each Zone (South, North, West and East). We would like to be serving at least 30000 (30K) children in the next 2 years. In approximately 100 Schools.

We would like to expand our&t=50s"> footprint across the country and if India ends up playing a much larger role in the Asia Pacific Region, we would be keen to explore the possibility of serving other Asian countries / other developing nations (Africa).

The author is the Co-Founder Director of Bal Utsav. The views expressed are the authors own.