Saajha

Introduction

Saajha is a non-profit organisation that works to catalyse India’s public education reforms through parent and community leadership. It builds an ecosystem for parents to feel connected and supported in their efforts to impact the lives of children and drive transformative change. through a communication app

Saajha works across 2000+ schools in Delhi, Maharashtra, Jharkhand and Karnataka. Listening to parents has been at the core of their work which generated the need for a communication app that bridges the communication gap between a parent and a child. Training, personalized support, policy reforms, adaptive technology have been their strategic drivers to enable parental participation.

From the lens of a child

Rahul (name changed) is a 8-year-old with a bright mind and a deep desire to excel in his studies. However, his journey was far from smooth. Attending a public school, he often found himself struggling with subjects like mathematics. The lack of personal attention and access to supplementary resources made his academic path daunting.

Rahul’s mother, Meera, was concerned about how Rahul would fight the fear of maths. As any parent, she wanted the best for her son, but the challenges were aplenty. Affordable educational resources were scarce, and Meera’s limited familiarity with technology posed an additional hurdle.

Meet Darshana, a housewife & a mother herself, who is also a trained Saajhedar (a champion member from the beneficiary community) working with Saajha – understands the struggles faced by parents like Meera and students like Rahul. Afterall, she was one among Meera a few years ago. As a Saajhedar, she is driven to help the parents’ community via WhatsApp, and phone calls.

The Saajhedar Support Model in collaboration with Platform Commons

Saajha’s approach is nothing short of innovative. They meticulously craft daily schedules for Rahul and his mother Meera. Champion parents, like Darshana and other dedicated Saajhedars, call parents associated with them and evaluate their child’s educational progress based on grade level.

In each call, agents offer invaluable support to the parents, assess the child’s learning levels through exciting innovative mode via the ASER assessments framework, and the system generates learning content based on the assessment results which is then sent to the parents via WhatsApp. The app, in turn, intelligently schedules the next call based on this feedback, ensuring a continuous flow of engagement and support for parents.

The Community Connect app (a.k.a Communication App), built by the Platform Commons team in partnership with Saajha team and Saajhedars does all the complex scheduling of outgoing calls, routing incoming calls, record child profiles, assessments, analyse recordings, and triggers learning content. The app also smartly reschedules the call based on the content & feedback of the call.

The Connect App’s impact numbers speak volumes:

• In the last year, over 1,00,000 parents were engaged, via about 100 Saajhedars.
• A staggering 1.3 million calls were made through the app that are recorded, and analysed.
• Learning content was triggered 6.9 million times via Whatsapp.

Through the Connect App, Saajha is beginning to see a revolution in the education sector. They empower parents, by actively involving them in their children’s education, and paving the way for a brighter future.