It is a historic day for Avinya Foundation. Today was the first day of school for the students t Avinya Academy Bandaragama, our first campus. After many months of planning, building, replanning, organizing, reorganizing, training, preparation and commitments, we were able to find the 120 students and the journey has started.
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| Avinya Academy Bandaragama Campus |
The purpose
I am super excited to work for Avinya because I am part of a
“good cause.” When Sanjiva first explained this to me, he was explaining me two
aspects, on one part we will help students who did not get a proper opportunity
during school life to succeed in life, and on the other hand, we will empower
the community surrounding the families of the students and those around the
campus.
Our purpose is to help provide opportunities to those who
were not privileged enough. Even if you they were not able to pass the O/L, we
will help the students to build a lifelong vocational career.
Even if they do not have means to afford a quality education
at an institute, we will ensure they are funded to be able to complete the
vocational certificate courses successfully.
We would ensure that these students are empowered with employability.
For employability, they will not only get the technical vocational knowledge
and training, but more importantly they will be empowered with 21st
century skills. This will ensure that they would not be prepared merely to find
and do a job but they will be empowered to build a career themselves.
The wicked problem
Every year, we have about 350,000 doing O/L born in the same
year. However, out of these, only around 10% to 12% of that student population make
it to government university.
People who can afford will go to private universities. That
too will account around 3% to 5%.
If we average the number who make it to universities, both
public and private sectors, to 15%, what happens to the rest of the 85%?
There is a considerable number of students who does badly or
fail O/L and they cannot even do A/Ls. Then doing A/L with the dream of entering
a university is a dream for vast majority. And many will realize this only
after lots of expenses, both monetary and more importantly time. They some of
them fall back doing a course. Those who do not do A/L go into do some “Course”
or attend vocational. However, even from those who does alternate educational
vocational programs, how many are employable? And talking about employability, from
those who attend universities, how many are employable.
We also need to take into account that another large number of
students try to find a job right after O/L or A/L. The question again is they
could get a low earing job, yet what is their ability to get a career without
proper technical knowhow or skills?
This is a massive and an overly complex problem to solve.
Objective
Our objective is to have an impact at least on 10% of the 350,000-student
population. That would not solve the complete wicked problem. But we will have
a considerable positive impact.
A school will take 120 students from each year’s O/L batch.
And at scale, we plan to have around 320 schools. That is around 38,000
students every year.
We do not want to disrupt the A/L dream. In other words, we
do not want to encourage anyone who is willing to do A/L to come to Avinya.
However, if students are looking for alternatives to A/L after their O/L and
even if they did not do great with their O/L we would like to invite them to
apply to Avinya.
And for them, we are offering 2.5 year long programs on
multiple vocational fields with NVQ level 4 to 6 certification.
Why Vocational?
Given the economic crisis in Sri Lanka, there is lot of talk
about industrial or production economy. For this we need industrial expertise.
However, for this, we not only need engineers, doctors, or management graduates,
we also need lots of support staff.
How can we keep the lights running, AC working, water
flowing? What about all the support staff that every industry needs. We need
vocationally educated, trained and skilled workforce.
This workforce needs to be treated well, have a decent income
and leads to a decent life style. In addition to technical skills, they should
also have 21st century skills that would make them presentable,
respectable and more importantly employable.
Their skills, both hard and soft, will help build sustainable
income for them and the economy in general.
The Empower Program
Avinya’s key differentiator in the vocational education
space is the Avinya Empower program.
May organizations start with the subject matter and focus on
soft skills, digital literacy is secondary or an afterthought. Teaching English
is a sperate course. Employability is hardly spoken about or even if it is
spoken about, it is seldom practiced.
Avinya Empower program comes with three pillars.
1.
English language skills
2.
Digital literacy
3.
21st century skills
The program is based on project-based learning (PBL) model. The
student is not assessed with exams at all. Rather the student is evaluated with
growth rubrics in for each empowerment pillar and given one-on-one feedback on
a regular basis.
The program is run for 6 months. During this time, in addition
to empowering the students to grow in relation to the above mentioned three
pillars of focus, they are also given mentoring on what vocational stream to
choose based on their interests, skills and traits. Most of the time, parents
and students would assume that something would fit them and jump onto a
vocational program to figure out halfway that it is not the thing for them.
This often happens in with students going through A/L steams as well. The
Avinya differentiator is that we help the students to make informed decisions
on their field selection with 6 months of mentoring and mutual discussion
between teachers and each student.
My Observations
Today being at the Bandaragama Avinya Campus, I was
fortunate to witness the activity and sessions of the classes of the inaugural
batch. The first day of engagements between
students and teachers were impressive. The attention paid and active participation
was very high. Even though it is only the first day of school, I can already
see the kind of positive impact the Empower program would have on these kids.
It is a different environment, a different style (namely
PBL) and the students seem to be adopting really well.
I can see that they are bringing the social and the cultural
influences. That is natural. Our objective is not to override their cultural or
social orientations. Rather to empower them to see the world and learn the
world with a novel perspective. It seems that the students are living well up
to expectations and catching up really fast.
I also observe that these students and are talented on multiple
fronts, listening to their interests, discussions, and lunch chit-chats.
I am pretty sure that these kids will do great with the
upcoming vocational programs.
Final Notes
It was a long day at the Bandaragama Campus. I had walked
more than 5 km up and down within the premises. Yet I had to write this today
and publish to mark this magical day. Even though I am tired, the purpose attached
to what we do as an organization and as a team at Avinya keeps me energized and
spirited.
I am confident that Avinya will be a great initiative that would
grow, scale, expand and succeed across the country and empower thousands of
families and millions of people.
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