Equipping Jammu's Students with Life Skills

Bharti Foundation in collaboration with Directorate of School Education, Jammu extends its Life Skills Development Project to Government Middle Schools in the state

Bharti Foundation in collaboration with The Directorate of School Education (DSEJ), Jammu is extending its ‘Life Skill Development among Students through House System’ project under its Satya Bharti Quality Support Program – At Scale to more than 3,500+ Government Middle Schools of Jammu.

The program lays emphasis on building capacities of head of schools and teachers to enable students with 21st century skills. The project is being led by the Counselling Cell with support of Aadharshila and Cultural Innovation Cells at DSEJ. Dedicated team from Bharti Foundation will impart training to resource persons to help implement the project. These resource persons will further support schools in developing a comprehensive understanding of life skills education and building the skills through school activities. In August 2022, the first round of training was organised for more than 390 resource persons who cascaded the life skill development training to 8,500+ teachers from 1,100+ Government High and Higher Secondary Schools in Jammu, benefitting more than 2 lakh students. This year, along with offline training, online trainings and webinars have also been designed to equip resource persons to support heads of schools and teachers effectively.

Speaking on the occasion, Sh. Ashok Sharma, Director of School Education Jammu, acknowledged the Bharti Foundation and applauded the program which intends to build critical life skills such as problem-solving, collaboration, managing emotions, creative thinking, etc. in line with National Education Policy 2020. He said, “strengthening of healthy competition among students in the house system will create positive impact and prepare students for the real-world challenges.”

Dr Romesh Kumar, Head Counselling Cell DSEJ, who happens to be the Nodal officer for the program, opined that this program will offer a paradigm shift in how schools function. It will be very meaningful to conduct co-scholastic activities with “life skills development” as an end in mind.

Speaking on the successful extension of the project, Mamta Saikia, CEO-Bharti Foundation said, “Bharti Foundation has been working in the field of education in rural India for the past 20 years. It is our belief that life skills among students is an important area to work on and can be best delivered to the students when integrated with various school activities.” She thanked the Directorate of School Education, Jammu, and all those who were involved in the ambitious project to support Bharti Foundation in creating a meaningful impact.

Bharti Foundation was set up in the year 2000 as the philanthropic arm of Bharti Enterprises. It implements and supports programs in primary, secondary and higher education. Since 2006, the flagship, Satya Bharti School Program has been providing free quality education to thousands of underprivileged children in 173 schools in rural India across five states, with a focus on the girl child. The impact of quality education has been widened by transferring the learning and good practices of this program to more than 3 lakh students studying in 808 partnering government schools across 11 States/UTs, through Satya Bharti Quality Support Program (QSP), since 2013.