Mrs. Kumari Shibulal is the Founder & Chairperson of the Shibulal Family Philanthropic Initiatives. A firm believer in the transformative power of education, Mrs. Shibulal feels it is important to secure the comprehensive and holistic development of children outside of just academics. She advocates focusing on the physical and emotional well-being of students while ensuring their academic growth and skill development. Her goal is to use education to empower children to better the lives of their families, communities and everyone in the country.
Q: What was your inspiration behind this idea to educate underprivileged children?
A: Both Shibu and I come from middle-class backgrounds – my father was a farmer with limited means. However, both our parents ensured that we got a good education. We believe that we have reached where we are because of the opportunities that our education opened up. It is this transformative power that made us choose education when we began our philanthropic journey. We started Vidyadhan back in 1999 on a very small scale by sponsoring scholarships for two children from the school where Shibu studied. Since then, the numbers have been consistently increasing and we are proud to provide scholarships in 11 states and one union territory. We currently sponsor the higher education of 5,090 students and have awarded more than 26,700 scholarships since inception.
Q: Please tell us about the different programs and initiatives under the Shibulal Family Philanthropic Initiatives?
A: Education has always been a priority for Shibulal Family Philanthropic Initiatives (SFPI). Though each initiative uses different models, their success is dependent on the partnerships we make with critical stakeholders.
‘Vidyadhan’ provides need-based scholarships to meritorious students to pursue higher education. Our vision is to increase Vidyadhan’s impact from 26,700 scholarships in 11 States and 1 Union Territory to 100,000 scholarships across the country in the next 5-7 years.
Vidyarakshak is a first of its kind scholarship programme initiated in partnership with the Ministry of Home Affairs. It is dedicated towards children of martyrs from the Central Armed Police Forces vide BSF, CRPF, CISF, ITBP, SSB & Assam Rifles from across India.
‘ShikshaLokam’ looks to enable change in the education sector by empowering education leaders. We partner with NGOs and CSOs to unbundle and customise solutions that we distribute to education leaders through our platform. Shikshalokam helps plug some of the gaps that exist in the education-leadership development space and provides a vibrant platform for education leaders to collaborate and innovate.
Ankur is a residential programme that aims to secure equal opportunities for children from underprivileged sections of society. Ankur assumes complete responsibility for children at a young age, taking care of their physical and emotional well-being as well as education. Great care is taken to ensure that parent-child bonds are nurtured through regular visits.
The Samhita Academy is the school that Ankur students attend and is set up by the Advaith Foundation on the same campus. It is a quality English medium school that is also attended by students from upper-middle-class families. Ankur students are provided with the same opportunities and extra-curricular activities that are available to fee-paying students and are also given career guidance.
We have partnered with Mantra4Change to work on EduMentum, a three-year incubation programme that enables early-stage non-profit organisations to build robust contextual solutions to achieve systemic education transformation across India.
Apart from the education sector, our Akshaya Shree Award empowers rural communities by promoting organic farming while Ayur Raksha provides medical care to paediatric patients with life-threatening conditions. We have managed to support over 3,282 paediatric surgeries till now.
Q: How has the journey since the launch been?
A: We were initially buoyed when alumni earned high paying salaries after graduating that enabled them to lift their families out of poverty. However, we quickly began to notice two shortcomings with our engagement process.
The first was a straightforward problem of limited financial resources – every year, there was an increasing number of otherwise eligible students whom the foundation could not support. The other major issue was that many students needed support to be ready for job markets. Many of them needed soft skills training and career guidance or mentorship to help them pursue a career that aligns with their passions and interests.
We realised that it was possible to address both of these shortcomings by partnering with external sponsors. This allowed us to exponentially increase the number of scholarships and financial aid being provided to students. After the pilot was successful, we began to invite corporate sponsors as well by offering them an effective and seamless outlet for their CSR funds. We also launched our “Each One Teach One” initiative to encourage those of our students who had found well-paying jobs and some measure of financial security to sponsor the education of another child.
In addition to financial support, our sponsors also provide training and mentoring to Vidyadhan students, and act as role models for them. We also partner with corporate sponsors like UST Global and Flex India to provide soft skills training and career orientation seminars to our students. Many of our individual sponsors are engaged with the selection process and have gone beyond their defined role to support students, especially during the lockdown.
An impact study of Vidyadhan, conducted by IIM Kozhikode (2018), revealed Vidyadhan alumni were able to pull their families out of poverty within 2.5 years of earning their degrees. It has raised the standard of living for most of their families, and increased their social status.
Q: What is the long-term vision of Vidhyadhan? How do you plan to extend your initiatives to a larger number of beneficiaries?
A: Our goal is to expand to all states and UTs in India in the next 5-7 years. This will require outreach efforts with critical stakeholders like education departments, local NGOs/CSOs, corporates, media and the like. We will also need to hire State Coordinators with local knowledge and language skills for each new state.
External sponsorship will remain a priority as it has helped us scale faster and reach a larger number of students. We already have strong relationships with many corporates and hope to expand to many more as our technology platform and wide reach are a one-stop solution for CSR programmes to scale initiatives across multiple states. We also plan to continue our “Each One, Teach One” initiative to ensure a continuous supply of individual sponsors.
Q: The pandemic has given unexpected challenges to the Indian Education sector. According to you, what lessons can be learned?
A: Education was one of the earliest sectors to be impacted and the full impacts of COVID-19 on learning children are yet to be fully understood from pedagogical, cognitive and systems perspectives. We were forced to rise to the occasion to not only adapt our operations but also provide critical relief and care to our students. We are still struggling to adapt to some of the lasting impacts of the pandemic.
Our primary concern was the safety and well-being of our students. Our state coordinators conducted a survey to measure the financial, health, family and mental problems faced by students. They also regularly reached out to students to help them adapt to the pandemic. We also coordinated with several sponsors to provide rations and financial assistance to severely distressed students
The selection process completely transitioned onto the online portal. Applications, tests, interviews and house visits were all conducted online. This had multiple benefits such as a 50% increase in the number of applications and a total of Rs. 48 lakh cost savings.
The biggest challenge that resulted from COVID-19 was the paucity of funding for higher education as the majority of CSR funding was diverted to provide COVID relief. This continues to be a challenge that we are attempting to overcome using a variety of strategies. These include continuous awareness building on the long-term impact of neglecting higher education and the V Charcha project – an informal platform for students and sponsors to directly interact and learn from each other’s experiences. This resulted in 140 additional student sponsorships with a total value of Rs 1.4 crore.
Overall, I think the biggest lessons learnt are that technological capacities are vital and that the number one strength of any organisation is its resilience and adaptability.
Though COVID-19 has been a difficult period for the entire world, one positive is that it made the Vidyadhan team even stronger and forced us to improve the quality of our offerings.