Education Ministry of Maharashtra and ConnectEd Technologies announce ‘EkShiksha’ campaign for rural schools across state

Schools to get solar-powered ‘Smart Classroom Systems’ allowing teachers to augment conventional teaching practices with tailor-made educational content

The Education Ministry of Maharashtra and ConnectEd Technologies, an education-technology start-up that creates hyper-scalable, rural-focused solutions, today launched a campaign, named ‘EkShiksha’. The campaign aims at uniting socially-responsible corporates, NGOs, school managements and grass-root level educators to eliminate the educational inequity and provide world-class education to children studying in rural schools across the state.

Under the aegis of this campaign, rural schools will be equipped with ConnectEd Technologies’ ‘Smart Classroom System’, which is a robust, solar-powered, teacher-aid product that works flawlessly in demanding rural conditions and enables educators to easily integrate tailor-made multimedia educational content into conventional teaching practices, thereby improving learning environment and academic performance in rural classrooms.

The campaign launch also marked the inauguration of ConnectEd Technologies’ maiden project in the Palghar region of Maharashtra, which is the model of development to be followed by the ‘EkShiksha’ initiative. To execute this project, ConnectEd Technologies successfully garnered support of the Education Ministry of Maharashtra, Dewan Housing Finance Ltd. (DHFL), school managements and educators in Palghar to deploy sixty ‘Smart Classroom Systems’ across an array of rural schools.

Expressing his best wishes, Shri. Vinod Tawde, Hon’ble Education Minister of Maharashtra, said, “It gives me immense pleasure to announce the ‘EkShiksha’ campaign for rural schools across the state. Hon’ble Prime Minister Shri. Narendra Modi launched the Digital India programme with the vision to transform India into a digitally empowered society and knowledge economy, and this campaign is a step forward in that direction. I hope corporates, NGOs, school managements and teachers will come forward to support ‘EkShiksha’ and the dynamic, young team at ConnectEd Technologies’ spearheading it”.

Lehar Tawde, Co-Founder, ConnectEd Technologies, added, “As far as the rural education system is concerned, it’s time the focus moved from improving student enrolment to enhancing education delivery. ‘EkShiksha’ aims at providing children in rural schools with equal access to world-class education, as currently enjoyed by their urban and semi-urban counterparts; with rural-focused technology playing the medium of delivery. We are immensely thankful to Dewan Housing Finance Ltd. (DHFL) for sponsoring deployment of our model project in Palghar and hope for a similar response from industry at-large”.

Kapil Wadhawan, CMD, DHFL, said, “DHFL has been stead-fast in its corporate commitment to enable people lead better lives by giving access to affordable housing finance. Education is key to better living, which is why we are focusing on its enhancement through our CSR activities. It gives me immense pleasure to support the model project of this innovative rural education campaign by the Education Ministry of Maharashtra and ConnectEd Technologies. I sincerely hope corporates across industry-lines step forward to support ‘EkShiksha’ across Maharashtra”.

The first phase of ‘EkShiksha’ will focus on enhancing educational infrastructure in some of the most densely populated Government, Government-aided and Tribal Welfare schools across every district in Maharashtra; followed by digitization of education delivery across all schools in the state. The campaign primarily focuses on densely populated schools as these are institutions with the most urgent requirement for education-technology solutions that promise improvement in teaching outcomes.