I-Saksham Education and Learning Foundation is a non-profit organization that works on providing quality primary education to children in extremism affected regions of Munger and Jamui districts of Bihar. It does so by training local youth as community edu-leaders and providing them coaching and mentoring support for their better life prospects. Currently, i-Saksham is building the capacity of 100 community edu-leaders. They have earned approximately INR 1.5 million through part-time enterprising community learning centers along with building their own skills. These youths have shown a great aspirational growth during their journey, as a result of which 5 youths are currently pursuing higher education from prestigious universities of the country. These youths have become a role model for others, aspiring other community educators in the area. We are currently providing quality education to approx. 2000 children from marginalized communities. In the year 2018-19, 75% of children have either shown improvement in their learning outcomes by 30% or continue to be at their grade-appropriate learning level.

We have invested heavily in learning processes including a training package, rubrics for on-site coaching support and performance management for Edu-leaders, and a repository of teacher-learning materials, and digital content.

i-Saksham has partnered with the Bihar Rural Livelihood Promotion Society (Jeevika) to work with cluster-level federations of women SHGs who will recruit females as edu-leaders, and oversee the delivery of quality education at schools/community learning centers. The partnership will shortly be scaled across different districts of Bihar.

We have invested heavily in learning processes including a training package, rubrics for on-site coaching support and performance management for Edu-leaders, and a repository of teacher-learning materials, and digital content.

Currently, we run the following three programs:

1. i-Saksham Fellowship - A 2-year fellowship program to build community edu-leaders
2. School Transformation - Partner with under-resourced government schools to provide quality educatio
3. Youth mentoring & coaching - Mentor fellow alumni to help them become active social change agents & achieve their professional aspirations

The target segment for the coming three years is children and females from extremism affected districts of Bihar.

• Catering educational needs of children in extrimism affected areas for their life long success in the world ahead
• Mentoring youth to build their aspirations and have better life prospects to come out from virtuous cycle of poverty
• Training youth on innovative pedagogy and to build 21st century skills among children to fulfill the need of advancement in education and avoid rote learning
• Sensitizing community on education through various panchayat level events

We work with/for youth and children largely from below the poverty line segment, or belonging to scheduled caste or scheduled tribe families. They are most severely affected with migration of primary bread earner and are involved in agriculture or agri-allied economic activities such as goat rearing & wood collection as an alternative source of livelihood. Many of these students are the first learner group of their families, and belong to the naxal heart land. These youths face unemployment due to lack of skill development opportunities and poor education background. As a result of this, they either migrate for unskilled menial work, or spend supposedly productive years of their young life to strive for lowest cadre in government jobs. Children in the same regions remain deprived of quality education which, in future lead them to face the same challenge.  i-Saksham is creating a cadre of community edu-leaders by training local youth, mainly females and differently abled on innovative pedagogies with the aid of digital technology. These community edu-leaders run an enterprising community learning centres, to provide quality education to children, hence getting a self-employment opportunity in the immediate to short term. Corporate partnership can help organization reach more such interior pockets through financial and capacity building support. Along with this,  a corporate's investment in rural areas will help in strengthening the model as community edu-leaders led efforts on innovative practices in teaching have majorly been confined to urban lands.  Corporate parntership can also be effective placing the ogranization as a brand to help both the parties tackle more educational challenges in future in such resource deprived regions. It can also help in building the urban rural linkage thereby creating more development opportunities for rural children and youths.