Disciplined, studious and obedient students are the hallmark of Akshara’s Ujjwal program, a Vibha success story

Kuna Hembram is a 9-year old, 4th grade student at the Brundagadi Upper Primary Residential School, Mayurbhanj district, Odisha. He lives in a small one-room house along with two older siblings with their single mom, who is an agricultural laborer. 

Kuna was enrolled in Ujjwal in January 2022, an after-school program spearheaded by Bijayalaxmi, an Education Volunteer/Teacher and a few others for this program at this school. Kuna has demonstrated authentic willingness and excitement to learn, ace and teach ‘Math’ from his start at this program. “He has the capacity to become a teacher, he supports other children and coaches them in Math, he can be playful but nothing takes him away from studying”, says Bijayalaxmi.

Kuna is passionate about school and all the glories that a school offers such as learning a variety of subjects, friendships and camaraderie with friends and the extracurricular activities in school. Tuition and facilities in his school are offered free of cost to children from socio-economically marginalized communities.

Thanks to Kapil Sangwan, Program Manager and Prabir Das, Project Lead for this story.

It takes $25 per year to support the Ujwal program for one kid like Kuna. As a part of our 2022 year end campaign our goal this week is to enable mathematical literacy for 250 more kids and we need your help!

Kuna is one of many such success stories of Akshara’s Ujjwal program. Vibha has partnered with Akshara to expand Ujjwal and Ganitha Kalika Andolana, a Mathematics program to improve math learning levels in in Mayurbanj and Ganjam districts of Odisha. Ujjwal classes have covered 4000+ children in the Mayurbhanj district when the regular school was halted during COVID, these classes were a platform for growth in Math and personality development and the class workbooks for children in grades 4 and 5 were designed and formulated by The Department of Education. None of this feat would have been accomplished had not been for the dedicated behind the scenes work of 2,300+ selfless volunteers in this program in the Mayurbhanj district.