HHT Annual Meetup at Delhi, 2016

There’s a saying by Theodore Roosevelt, “Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.” Keeping these words in mind, our organization and it’s members thought to plan a meet-up wherein everyone can share their experiences and challenges which they face while working in different fields of education in India.

On 11th December,2016 we organised annual meet up at our Delhi HHT office which brought forth the participation from every member of Happy Horizons Trust. The event was aimed at sharing stories, experiences and challenges in working in field of education which gave chance to every member to come forward. Also, the purpose of this event was to give a better exposure to our Champions working in Bihar, who visited Delhi for an educational trip.

Meeting started with the welcome note, followed by the general introduction of everyone present at event. With the short speech about HHT and it’s activities, there were also brief success stories of HHT in Simri Bakhtiyarpur, Bihar with its different projects like LTV(Learning through Videos), Project Jagriti, Digital Literacy & Internet awareness Program etc. HHT Bihar team includes our Champions along with Project Manager Vinay Kumar and IT instructor Sonu Kumar. Champion Nigar, Jyoti, Komal and Neha were given chance one by one to share their experiences. While sharing her experiences, Nigar talked about how she use to take example of ganesh ji ne kitne laddu khae to make the procedure of addition and subtraction funny and engaging. Champions also thanked HHT for providing them a platform that helped them in self-evolution, confidence building and showing a way for better future.

Session followed by a presentation on child psychology and importance of education by volunteer Pooja Kumari, which invoked a new enthusiasm in champions to enhance their skills, followed by a brainstorming interactive session. Core team member Rakesh Ranjan, along with Rashmi and Rekha Yadav gave some suggestions to enhance the teaching skills, to provide quality education and fruitful environment to students at primary schools. Also highlighted the importance of education at primary schools as foundational level. Members from Pratham infotech shared thoughts on Digital Literacy and ways to enhance learning through videos.

At concluding session, HHT Managing Trustee Kshitiz Anand narrated about the foundation story of HHT as an organization. The journey started with an the idea of enhancing quality of education in rural areas in 2008 to finally giving it a shape of an organization in 2012 with his wife and President of HHT Vatsala Vikram. Initially, the program started in Bakhtiyarpur in Bihar, then taking lead in Bangalore widen the program. Although the aims were high but there were many criticisms from people around. But Hurdles at path made the intention even stronger to make a difference in society. He also described about the education chart of India where about 75% of population lives in villages and 25% in town. India, despite being high at population, is very low at education chart. And to overcome that situation and increase the education rate in India, we need to work on the quality of education provided at primary level. Although this dream seems hard to achieve but education is the only key for a better future and a better nation, and that’s what we at HHT through our event aim at.

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– Post by Puja Raj with contributions from Ritu Singh, Pooja Patel.