Startup founders from the Young Indian Philanthropic Pledge (YIPP), spearheaded by Zerodha’s Nikhil Kamath and Accel’s Prashanth Prakash have collectively raised ₹40 crore to create model schools across the country.
MoU with Karnataka govt
To start with, YIPP has signed a 3-year memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Department of School Education and Literacy (DoSEL), to achieve 105 model schools across Karnataka, as a part of the Karnataka Model Schools Pathways Programme (KMSPP). In the future, YIPP is expected to work with more state governments for this project and the fund size might also be increased.
The aim is to transform 105 schools and its co-located anganwadis/preschools as “Model Schools” in four districts (Haveri (50), Tumkur (25), Yadgir (25), Davangere (5) by 2025. The initiative also incorporate advancements from leading ed-tech companies to utilize their techniques beyond urban areas to be more socially accessible for rural communities.
Program funding
The program will be funded by Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) along with Young India Philanthropic Pledge (YIPP) which includes Sujeet Kumar Founder of Udaan, Abhijeet Pai Founder of Gruhas, Nikhil Kamath Founder of Zerodha and True Beacon, Prashanth Prakash of Accel, Ravi Pai Founder of Century real estate, Aprameya R Founder of Vokal & Koo, Rohit M A Founder of Cloudnine, Harshil Mathur Founder of Razorpay, Pulkit Jain Co-founder of Vedantu and Gaurav Manjal Founder of Unacademy.
This is the first project in a series that YIPP will undertake where signatories, all under 45 years of age, will pledge 25 per cent of their wealth with a minimum spend of ₹1 crore per year.
Commenting on the initiative, Prashanth Prakash said, “The program would be delivered by a collaborative of 10 organizations with a sole aim of converging civil society efforts otherwise operating in silos and bringing in deep national and international expertise towards improving the quality of education in Karnataka”.
Partners
The collaborative will have Sikshana Foundation, Yuva Unstoppable and India Literacy Project as implementation partners, Quest Alliance and Udhyam as knowledge partners. Ernst and Young (EY) and Sambodhi as monitoring and evaluation partners, United Way of Bengaluru as the fund management partner, with Sattva Consulting acting as the Project Management Unit (PMU) driving the program in close coordination with DoSEL, GoK.
Addressing the gap in accessibility to education, Nikhil Kamath added “Education is at the core of most solutions our society needs today, for the affluent to have access to a different pedigree of education is bound to create further inequality. YIPP through this program hopes to level the playing field and provide govt schools with the tools to take on private ones.”
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Published on October 1, 2022
