Abstract
Research has shown that social capital plays a significant role in achieving success. For children from disadvantaged communities in India—such as the urban poor—financial and cultural constraints severely limit their ability to complete their schooling, forcing them to enter the job market as unskilled workers. This chapter presents an educational intervention called Project Disha in an urban slum by Kriti Social Initiatives, a non-profit organization in India. Project Disha is a scholarship and mentoring program that aims to teach life skills and fill the social capital gap for these disadvantaged students. Due to the pandemic, the program switched to an online mode, an already challenging situation made more so due to the extremely limited technology available to the children. With limited internet connectivity, frequent power cuts, and access only to inexpensive smartphones, Project Disha now relies on a team of volunteer mentors and creative pedagogical strategies to keep students connected, engaged, and learning.
TopPurpose
In this chapter we aim to:
- •
Introduce to a wider audience the challenges of educational interventions in the Indian context
- •
Explore initiatives in this sector and the lessons learnt therefrom
- •
Present a creative pedagogical initiative – a mentoring program – for young teens from disadvantaged backgrounds, and describe the pivot to covid-required online teaching in a low technology environment
The attempt here is to describe a still-growing program in order to develop better learning outcomes, share the challenges and successes encountered along the way, and move from praxis to theory to better locate such initiatives within the academic sphere.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Culturally Relevant Pedagogy: Is an educational practice that takes into consideration the cultural backgrounds of students and uses those cultural referents to impart skills, knowledge and understanding. By using culturally relevant knowledge and frames of reference that acknowledge and affirm the unique cultural identities of the children, learning becomes more effective and meaningful for them.
Social and Cultural Capital: Is a concept developed by cultural theorist Pierre Bourdieu, and refers to the social networks, access to education and knowledge, and modes of behaviour that some groups of people have access to, while others do not. Bourdieu argued that this invisible “capital” was as important as economic capital and showed how they work in tandem with symbolic power to sustain and promote inequalities in society.
Critical Pedagogy: Is an approach to education rooted in understanding the role of power and politics in society. It views education as part of a broader process of liberation from oppressive structures that cause social inequality, and encourages teachers to consider pedagogy a joint process of knowledge creation rather than a mere transfer of information to from teacher to student. It draws from social theorist Paulo Freire’s work, and has been developed in the United States by scholars such as Henry Giroux, Ira Shor, Peter McLaren, and Antonia Darder.