PULL THE STRINGS
WOMEN CALL SHOTS IN OFFBEAT CAREERS
RUKMINI THAKORE |
FOUNDER, KAKSHAA
When she moved back to Vadodara in 2009 armed with a degree from the London School of Economics and a one- and- a- half year long stint at Citigroup, Rukmini Thakore, 27, was sure she wanted to use her skills to “do something with a social cause”. She picked primary education. “I saw educational models in China and Korea and realised that there is a need to give quality education to our children and technology is an effective platform for that,” she says. In 2013, she launched Kakshaa, a creative and energy packed audio-visual learning programme that aims to supplement conventional teaching in primary schools. With a team of experts, Thakore has created a repository of over 500 lessons that fall in the National Curriculum Framework. To make it fun and interactive, the programmes are a mix of muppetry, songs, experiments, activities, storytelling and theatre. “These are engaging teaching methods that enthuse children and implicitly train local teachers,” explains Thakore. For now, the programmes cover subjects such as English, Hindi, Mathematics and Environmental Science, and are aimed at primary school students, especially in “under-resourced schools” in rural areas. Thakore managed to rope in muppeteers, community workers, musicians, lyricists, cinematographers and teachers. “When children go to school, there’s barely one teacher and these tutors are overburdened,” she says. Kakshaa’s programmes are currently running in schools in villages of Haryana and Thakore plans to take them to other regions soon.