VISION & MISSION

Our Vision

To reduce social inequality through quality and purposeful education by transforming the teaching and learning processes.

Our Mission

Break away from rote learning and passive teaching practises and set a culture of active and collaborative learning

We reach and empower school leaders, teachers and children in socially disadvantaged communities to understand their need and communicate the benefits for improving the quality of education.

We design innovative, affordable and culturally relevant English and Life Skills programmes for the disadvantaged communities delivered through experiential and joyful learning approach.

The Problem

The current education system only prepares students for examinations but deprives them of essential life skills. They are taught by rote and are very rarely given the opportunity to overcome real-life challenges using what they have learnt. The lack of life skills deprives them of the ability to make informed decisions and also drastically decreases their ability to understand and process information, thus contributing to their unemployability.

The Solution

After four years of intensive research in the villages of India, we’ve come up with an English and Life Skills curriculum. We nurture a culture of learning by promoting joyful learning. The English and Life Skills curriculum enables them to read, write, listen and communicate with ease. Their ability to read and assimilate a wide variety of text becomes easier.

Now, five year after Ignis’ intervention, 90 percent of the children going to schools in the villages are enrolled in higher education in colleges.
Now, in 2019, all the girls are still in school.

OUR STORY

What is our Story?

How did two passionate educationists start a social enterprise that ensured 200,000 children and 10,000 teachers across India?

MEET THE FOUNDERS

Rennis Joseph

Ceo & Co-founder

Expert in socio-linguistics and pragmatics from Jawaharlal Nehru University (New Delhi) with 19 years of experience in training and development.

Immaculate Mary

Co-founder & Academic Director

M.Phil in Social Medicine and Public Health from JNU, New Delhi. She has over 18 years of experience in health, education and development sector

OUR PRIORITIES

Ignis works to mitigate the educational crisis aggravated by COVID-19 through a tech-enabled hybrid mode of learning, promoting STEM, English and Life Skills education for underprivileged students, through capacity building in low-income schools that cater to these students. 80% of the students that Ignis support are from low-income families that earn less than SGD 8/day, according to a lean data study by Acumen. Till date we have served over 310000 students, primarily from poor and underserved communities, trained over 12000 teachers across more than 1500 schools.

1. Low-Cost Schools: We have worked with 650 schools (over 200,000 students) in the last 6 years. Our English and Life Skills Lab is a capacity building program that costs SGD 13/student per year. Low-cost-schools, also called affordable private schools are those that charge less than INR 20,000/- (USD 200-300) per year.

We are currently developing mobile apps to deliver STEM along with English and life skills to help schools to equip teachers and train students through synchronous hybrid models. This will be offered at SGD 20 per student/year. We aim to scale this to 2.2 million students by 2027. This will help them break the culture of learning by rote and move to skills based participatory learning.

2. Teacher Fellowship Program for Government Schools: This has been scaled to 32 schools by 2020. This is supported by grants from funds like H T Parekh Foundation. This community based intervention (at SGD 75 per student/year) will be scaled to 920 schools by 2027. Ignis is developing a separate division to explore more partnerships to scale this.

3. Non Profit and Government Partnerships: Ignis worked with the state of Andhra Pradesh to build a similar hybrid model. We have been working with United Way of Hyderabad and Delhi, and Deshpande Foundation to scale similar models.

4. Low-Income Learners: We are piloting a B2C model of training low-income learners from schools, colleges and also youth. This affordable solution will be scaled once the apps are developed.

We focus on activity-based learning and encourage group projects, classroom interactions and adopt a participatory approach to learning. We prioritize conceptual understanding rather than rote-based learning. We ensure personal attention for all students. We believe that a culturally relevant purposeful education that prioritizes meta-learning skills and critical thinking will provide students from hitherto deprived communities with the required tools to pursue higher education and make informed choices about their careers. This will ultimately help them break the cycle of intergenerational poverty.

Awareness of the environment and responsible social behaviour is part of the integrated life skills component of our engagements. For instance, we discourage the use of single-use plastics and target at least a 30% reduction in its use during the first year of engagement. Since we work with predominantly poor communities, we also focus on proper nutrition and hygiene practices.

We address the following UN mandated Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): Quality Education; Gender Equality; Reduced Inequality; No Poverty; and establishing Partnerships for the Goals.

SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS

OUR IMPACT

3,10,199+ Happy Children

Our curriculum engages using play as a tool to enhance the English and life skills of children.

12,048+ Better Teachers

Ignis’ whole school capacity building programmes are about motivating, nurturing and building the skills of teachers.

1542+ satisfied schools

Accor-ding to a lean data study by Acumen and HT Parekh Foundation in 2018, 42 percent of the parents agreed that Ignis has improved their child’s quality of Life thus improving the environment in the school.

Testimonials

Excellent Service!

Ignis’ approach towards building communication skills is in the right direction and the program they have designed provides a lot of support to teachers … Ignis was the best service provider we have worked with.

Ms. Shravya Reddy

Presidency High School, Nizamabad

Ignis – A Delight!

Indeed, like any other principal, I had my own apprehensions, because the children over here are from a rural set-up and they hardly speak in English because they are first-generation learners. I tried to look into many aspects before I went with Ignis, but I must say at this juncture that it has really worked wonders. I am delighted at the way the children are excited for the ELSL class and at the same time, the teachers also are very interested in attending the ELSL trainings. To see the teachers come together and the children working well, and coming up is definitely a delight for the principal

Mrs. N. Aruna Rao

Principal, Pallavi Model School, Bouduppal

Great Support!

There is a great demand and craze for English. Parents are sending their kids to private English medium schools. Because of this, Ignis is helpful for rural students to nurture their confidence and language skills.

Mr. P. Baswa Rao

DEO, Khammam

Ignis in Media

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Our partners

In our journey so far, we have collaborated with these amazing companies,
organisations that help us get a step closer to achieving our mission.

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