In the 21st century, when the world is changing rapidly and technology has ushered us in the digital age of communication, mere literacy does not equip someone to succeed and achieve something. Educational curriculum around the world has gone through great reformation too as newer and better ways of teaching and learning have been adopted by institutions and governments.

In this age, the holistic development of a child can only be ensured if they get an exposure to holistic education too. WNS Global Services in India, as a part of its CSR vision, has been doing exactly this for thousands of children in different geographies across five states.

In 2010, WNS employees were given the responsibility to vote and choose the area in which they wanted their company to work and an overwhelming majority of 71 percent votes for Education. Thus, it was decided that WNS will be focussing mainly in the area of education as part of its Corporate Social Responsibility.

Moving further, in 2011, the company launched the project ‘Education Beyond Academics’, which aligned with the vision of the company which was to ‘Educate, Empower and Enrich’. This democratic way of making a decision also ensured that WNS employees felt connected to their companies CSR vision and from time to time contributed in taking it further. 

WNS believes that having the same curriculum for every child cannot provide meaningful education to them. This lack of connect due to centralized curriculum then leads to dropouts from schools and thus they aim to eradicate this problem by creating learning spaces which are equipped to handle this.

In WNS learning centers, the focus is given largely to providing digital and career-oriented education. To help in proper implementation of these ideas, WNS has partnered with some of the best names in the education sector with a broad experience. These include Pratham Infotech, Palvi Trust and Seva Sahyog.

“These NGOs are chosen on the basis of their track record of running similar programs and their familiarity with the area. They regularly share reports on the pass percentage, school dropout rate and attendance rate to measure the effectiveness of the programs,” WNS states. 

Highlights of the project

The Learning Center concept is developed in a way that it promotes holistic learning in form of life skills, computer or digital literacy, access to books, career counselling, remedial education, etc. As a part of this project, WNS has been providing computer education to the children throughout the year for an extended duration.

However, one of the most unique steps taken by WNS is that of creating mobile libraries. The organization takes a lot of pride in talking about this initiative. Old vans are used to create movable libraries which are then sent to remote areas where the children otherwise do not have access to any books. These libraries work as a major source of attraction and motivation for the kids.

Another support which WNS has provided these schools is by creating digital learning spaces with a high-quality internet access. It is because of their efforts that today children studying in these schools have access to digitized learning techniques. Career-oriented approach is adopted for the final-year graduate students to make them suitable for employment.

In totality, WNS has adopted an approach which takes care of all the important aspects that are related to providing a good quality holistic education to the children. Almost all of the schools are located in the vicinity of WNS office locations across the world.

Till now, the project has reached out to over 1,00,000 children across the globe. 209 schools have been fully equipped with digital learning facilities and libraries containing more than 20,000 books. In addition, eight mobile libraries are now helping more than 12,000 children living in remote areas to get an access to books. These mobile libraries operates in Mumbai, Nashik, Vizag, Pune and Chennai.

Employee volunteering 

One of the most important factors that makes ‘education beyond academics’ project a major success is that is supported wholeheartedly by the WNS employees. As mentioned above, the decision to focus on education as a key area was taken in a democratic manner by the company and this has helped in motivating the employees to come forward and contribute in the development and implementation of the project.

Over 33,000 employees of the company spread across the globe are motivated to volunteer in for the CSR work. The company maintains a centralized database on employee volunteering which helps in increasing the participation and getting better results out of it. The information regarding projects and volunteering opportunities are regularly shared with the employees.

“Employees are in charge of the design, delivery and monitoring of WCF activities. It provides WNS a unique opportunity to engage employees and clients in a meaningful way. Moreover, by using internal resources as volunteers, WCF has greatly improved the sustainability of the program and has helped it grow rapidly,” the company states.

WNS is an example of how companies can shape their CSR projects and motivate their employees to actively participate in them by making the decision-making process more democratic. Their work in the field of education is today touching the lives of children in nine different countries and they have bigger plans of reaching out to schools in rural and remote locations in the future.

Impact-Story is a series on development and CSR interventions leading to some impacts on the ground. If you have a project, innovation or intervention that has changed the lives of a few people or a community, please share a brief note at csr@ngobox.org. Our Team will get back to you after validating the information for a detailed coverage.