Project Udaan 2.0 (Quality Online Education for the poor and underprivileged youth):

Project Background:

Demographic Dividend or Demographic Curse: With more than 65% of the population below the age of 35, India currently hosts one of the largest youth populations in the world. The demographic dividend that we possess is visualised as the propellent which would push us to become a developed country by 2047. But tragically more than 10 crore poor and underprivileged youth of the country who are entering the workforce of the country or want to pursue higher education for entry into prestigious institutions of the country are currently deprived of access to quality education because of their financial condition.

The merciless clutches of poverty: The poor and underprivileged youth of almost the whole country, who stay in villages and small towns, cannot afford to study in good schools and colleges in the state or outside. Hence, they lack good subject knowledge, English Communication, Personality Development, knowledge about good career options and access to good recruitment coaching centers, etc. Because of these severe deficiencies, they cannot compete with other well-to-do youth and are left behind.

Breaking the vicious cycle of poverty: The project targets poor and underprivileged youth who lack access to quality education. When the pandemic hit and we had to close down our physical centre, our senior members went back to the drawing board to devise new initiatives to help the disadvantaged sections of the society. The senior mentors of ECF formulated Udaan 2.0 during the pandemic after witnessing the boom in online education. Before rolling out the project, our senior mentors wanted to hear from our stakeholders, i.e. the poor and underprivileged youth, & understand their needs before the final launch.

Hypothesis Validation (Feasibility Studies and Modifications):
A survey was conducted in 10 States: UP, Bihar, Jharkhand, West Bengal, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Orissa, Chhattisgarh, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, in which 1072 Youth participated.

In the survey, the poor young boys and girls repeatedly mentioned that they lack good knowledge of course subjects, English Communication, personality development and soft skills, knowledge about good career options, and most importantly, access to good recruitment examination coaching.

During the survey these poor youth pointed out that most of them were also the sole breadwinners of their families and could not opt for the course at a fixed time which is normally the daytime. Therefore, we thought about starting such courses in a Flexi-Location & Flexi-Time mode. Under this flexi time & flexi location mode the poor youth could study sitting anywhere at any time. This made studying easier for the poor students without jeopardizing their present daily earnings.

Goals of the Project:
The primary goal of Project Udaan 2.0 is to empower the poor and underprivileged youth across India, particularly those residing in villages and small towns, by providing them with quality online education and career guidance at their doorstep at almost zero cost.  We are trying to level the playing field and provide equality of opportunity, enabling them to escape the vicious cycle of poverty. For this purpose, we are taking knowledge to the doorsteps of the poor and underprivileged youth through QUALITY ONLINE COURSES from premier institutes under the project:

1. 1. Subjects Coaching for preparation of recruitment exams: NEET, IIT JEE, NDA, Air Force, CDS, SSC, and Banking etc. - By Physics Wallah
   2. Personality development and soft skills – By Orbit
   3. Career Counselling
   4. English language proficiency- By Orbit 

This is the LEAST COST OPTION TO IMPART HIGHLY COSTLY COURSES TO THE POOR AND UNDERPRIVILEGED YOUTH OF OUR COUNTRY.

Project Udaan 2.0 aims to take knowledge to the doorsteps of the poor & underprivileged youth of the country at almost zero cost to empower them TO RISE AND SHINE IN LIFE in a Flexi-location and Flexi-time mode. Apart from these quality online courses, one of the cornerstones of Project Udaan 2.0 is our mentorship framework where a mentor is assigned for a cohort of 10 students who acts as their friend, philosopher and guide during and after their academic journey.

Objective of MENTORSHIP SUPPORT: To equip poor and underprivileged youth with:
- Skills, knowledge, and support network they need to succeed academically;
- Transition into fulfilling careers;
- Provide personal counselling support; and
- Develop resilience in life's challenges.

Spread of the Project:
We collaborated with the CSC e-governance Services Ltd, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, Govt. Of India, to reach the deserving youth in every remote village and small town of the country. Thus, with the stroke of a pen we got access to nearly 5.5 lakh Common Service Centers (CSCs) in Six lakh villages and fifty thousand Common Service Centre Academies at the block/tehsil level all over India. These centres and academies are working on our behalf to identify deserving poor young boys and girls, motivate them, get them registered on our portal for the courses and monitor the progress of the students. They are also promoting our project Udaan 2.0 in their areas to spread our mission to reach every underprivileged youth in the remotest areas of the country.

Methodology:

• Candidates visit their nearest CSC centre for registrations. For screening of our desired candidates, we asked them to submit their mark sheet and income certificate at the CSC centres while registering for the course. The student has to successfully qualify the screening test for the concerned course.
• Post registration, The ECF team verifies the details of the students and sends the details of the verified candidates to the course providers for course activation through the LMS team.
• Periodic Expenditure reports about using donor funds are shared with the donors.

Project Udaan 2.0- Phase- 1 (2023-24):
The Journey:

• Project Udaan 2.0 was launched on 16th October 2023 in collaboration with the CSC Academy and the support of our donors in AU Small Finance Bank and Coal India Limited.
• The initial target of the project was 840 student registrations for the state of Rajasthan & Gujarat. We achieved our target within one month of the launch.
• We decided to expand our reach with the support of our donors and partners and launched the project PAN India with an annual target of 2500 student registrations for the FY 2023-24. Again, we achieved our target before 31st December 2023.
• We began receiving an overwhelming number of requests from all across the country. Under the esteemed guidance of our senior mentors and support from CSC we were able to reach 24 states and 3 union territories covering 540 districts of the country.
• Due to the valiant efforts of our team members and successful negotiations with our course providers, we were able to cut down the cost of empowering one poor youth from 6000 rupees to 3000 rupees to cope with the growing demand from across the country.
• Hence, we were able to double our target for the financial year 2023-24. We were able to register 4557 students in the FY 2023-24. It is twice the number our donors had expected in the CSR support they had assigned to us.

Accolades of Project Udaan 2.0:

• We were able to bring down the average cost of a course from Rs. 6000 to Rs. 3000.
• Calling activity for more than 4500 students. Our team has conducted more than 14,000 calls to activate these students to increase the conversion rate of the project and eliminate wrong registrations for efficient use of every paisa of our donors.
• We have a comprehensive Internal Concurrent Evaluation (ICE) in place to simultaneously optimize our systems and processes, ensuring quality service delivery and an enriched user experience.
• Our mentor support system is the cornerstone of our project, where retired civil servants, corporate veterans, and working professionals guide our beneficiaries and encourage them to complete the course.
• We have onboarded IIT Delhi as the agency that will conduct the Independent Impact Evaluation of the project, providing a massive boost to the overall project's credibility.
• We have an overwhelming demand from all over the country, yet we have kept a conservative target of empowering 35000 poor youth of the nation in this FY 2024-25 with a corpus requirement of INR 10 crores.
• We give the best, highly valuable and costly courses to these poor youth at a very nominal cost, so that they value it and study sincerely TO RISE AND SHINE IN LIFE.
• We were generously supported by M/s Coal India Ltd; M/s A U Small finance Bank Ltd; M/s Hexagon Ltd, M/s SIS Ltd and numerous individual donors in 2023-24 to the sum of Rs. 1.05 crores.
• We could raise this much in four months time only, that too in a situation when we had just started and had not proven either our credentials or the acceptability of our project.
• We have, since the beginning of project Udaan 2.0, put in place a highly rigorous and robust Internal Concurrent Evaluation (ICE) system in place to minimise risks and improve the quality of our courses as well as the delivery mechanism.
• We have a MOU since Oct 2023 with Common Service Center Academy SPV Pvt Ltd (an organisation of Ministry of Electronics & IT , GOI) to expand our reach up to the remotest villages and towns all over our nation.
• We have an MOU with Jeevika. It is an undertaking of MoRD under National Rural Livelihood mission (NRLM). Jeevika will be our partner in Bihar for the pilot project. With more than 16 crore SHGs in the country, this MOU enables ECF to have a presence in roughly every household of the country
• Project Udaan 2.0 has also been endorsed by the Ministry of Education to disseminate information about the initiative in all the schools/institutions under their purview.

Project Udaan 2.0- Phase 2 (2024-25):
We have ample learnings after running this project for last seven months and we have modified our systems and processes to implement best practices and introduced innovative interventions to boost project impact, credibility and outreach. Below is the list of interventions introduced:

1. Employment Support Under Udaan 2.0: ECF is currently exploring opportunities to tie-up with employers directly and impart technical skills to Udaan 2.0 students and enhance their employment prospects.
2. Screening Test for each course: To maximise the impact of courses offered and onboard deserving students for the respective courses.
3. Learning Hours on Udaan 2.0 Dashboard: The donors and mentors will be given access to our learning hour dashboard where they can monitor in real time the activity of students under the courses they have sponsored.
4. Donor Transparency: At ECF, we endeavour to ensure effective utilisation of every paisa of donor money. Apart from monthly and quarterly reports with beneficiary details, we have also created a platform where donors can access the details of their sponsored students in real-time through our dashboards.
5. AI Support : To promote interactive learning for students enrolled under our different courses, we have AI assistants (audio & chat) developed & integrated on our platform. It also facilitates learning in their vernacular language, organise mock interviews, engage in discussions on a topic and address student doubts and queries.
6. Real time monitoring: All our course providers have their own dashboards to track student activity which is further integrated with our Learning Management System (LMS). The activity of students is monitored in real time post course activation to keep students on track.
7. Student Leaderboard: With features like streak, module completion status and assessment rankins to drive engagement and motivate students.
8. Feedback & Grievance on Udaan 2.0 Dashboard: Weekly student feedback and trainer feedback is uploaded on the dashboard which help us further modify content, replace trainers or take other necessary steps in overall improvement of the project. Grievance redressal is prioritised with 24-hour deadlines.
9. Multiple windows of registrations: Apart from the CSC channel, we are also inviting registrations directly from our website. We will begin receiving registration from Jeevika Didi soon which multiplies our reach tenfold from presence to every village to reaching almost every household of the country. Post the approval of Ministry of Education, we are exploring direct institutional tie-ups like we did with Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences in March 2024 where we provided NEET/JEE courses to mor than 250 tribal youth Odisha.
10. Before and After Testimonials for Creating Impact Matrix: In case of English Speaking, Personality Development & Career Counselling course, we have started a process of Before and After Videos to visually demonstrate the impact of our interventions.
11. Gamification for Increasing Student Engagement: To increase student engagement, we have tried to gamify their study experience through leaderboards based on attending continuous live classes (STREAK), Completing Modules, Performance in assessments, Attending Webinars etc. They are notified of their progress in their respective course wise WhatsApp groups and best performers are celebrated and rewarded monthly.
12. Mentorship Framework: We have tweaked the mentor mentee groups based on linguistic and occupational preferences to enhance engagement. Apart from weekly sessions with their respective cohorts and submitting their feedback, mentors have been given a 20-week course outline for our mentorship framework which includes topic ranging from preparation of mock interviews, time management, mental health etc. Each week a webinar is conducted. Students are awarded with certificates and mentors receive digital mementos.