Strengthening School Infrastructure

Schools near our project sites across rural areas, semi-urban areas lack the basic infrastructure like adequate classrooms, sanitation facilities, furniture and majority of the school buildings are in dilapidated condition. This leads to suboptimal teaching and learning outcomes. There is strong evidence that better infrastructure leads to lesser dropouts thereby ensuring better learning outcomes.

Every year, Company also focuses on developing educational infrastructure for children and/or youth with special needs. Refurbishment and construction of educational-cum-residential facilities in Jalgaon and Gandhinagar has helped benefit more than 400 special students, including deaf & mute children, physically challenged youth, etc.

Providing Holistic Educational Infrastructure in Government School, Rajasthan

Research has shown that quality education, coupled with a safe and secure infrastructure, plays a crucial role in encouraging children to enroll in schools.

The recent implementation of NEP 2020 underscores the importance of providing schools with decent infrastructure to ensure a high-quality physical environment. At KPIL, we are committed to creating quality and safe infrastructure for students to develop effective learning environments and inspire them to excel academically.

We undertook extensive construction and refurbishment at a Government School in Rajasthan from FY 2020-21. The school serves children from socially and economically disadvantaged communities. While the school had 450 students in FY 2020-21, many needy children were on a waiting list due to limited space in classrooms. To accommodate more students while providing an academically driven environment, multiple intervention were undertaken. The major construction work was completed in FY 2022-23.

The multitude of interventions undertaken in the project were:

• Additional 5 classrooms to accommodate additional intake of students
• Refurbished the dilapidated structure of the school
• Construction of additional toilets/ sanitation blocks for both boys and girls
• Refurbishment of the kitchen block used for cooking the mid-day meal
• Building a mid-day meal shed where the children are served the meal daily
• Constructed separate hand wash station next to the mid-day meal shed to ensure clean hygiene practices
• Construction of Anganwadi Block to run early child-care and mother-care development program
• Construction of a separate cycle shed for children to park their cycles in an arranged manner
• Set up a computer lab with 20 desktops
• Set up Smart Class for interactive learning
• Construction of separate, well-ventilated, well-designed, child-friendly Anganwadi block to provide an enriched environment for young children

For the refurbishment and construction of additional classrooms, a professional architect was hired to design the building and suggest changes in the existing infrastructure. The upgraded facilities have influenced enrolments to go up from 450 students in FY 2020-21 to 750 students in FY 2022-23.

Enhancing 21^st Century Skills

With a view to enhance 21st century skills, digital smart class solutions and Mini science centres are set up year on year in schools at remote geographies near our business operations. The schools with skewed teacher-student ratios benefit the most with digital smart class solution as the teachers are able to manage multiple classes simultaneously.

Setting up of Mini Science centres have helped in inculcating basic concepts of Science & Technology (Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics) at a very early age amongst children who do not have the right kind of access. These projects are helping transform the traditional ‘rote’ based education system to more interactive, innovative ways of learning amongst children while focusing on an interactive pedagogy of teaching across multiple geographies. More than 85 schools have been transformed till date across the States of Nagaland, Odisha, Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, etc. reaching out to more than 33,000 students.

Provision of Safe Drinking Water

Water purifiers and water coolers are donated to schools for marginalised children. While water purifiers ensure the access to safe drinking water, the water coolers gives children respite in the hot summers. The project focus is to lower the rate of waterborne diseases amongst children thereby decreasing the dropout rate.

More than 35 schools have been covered through this intervention till date.

Skilling

Aligned to the Skill India Mission of Government of India, KPIL's skilling initiative focuses on strengthening the pool of skilled workforce in the industry we operate in. Skill hubs have been set up in the Government run Industrial Technical Institutes (ITI) that train the alumni and existing batches of students in employability enhanced trainings covering trades like Welder, Electricians, Barbenders, Carpenters, etc.

With a view to provide innovative approach in skilling, Simulation-based Welding Labs have been set up in two Government-run Industrial Training Institutes in Chhattisgarh & Gujarat. These labs are offering extended Reality (XR) based training that will enable real-time evaluation and practice of welding techniques for the students enrolled in the course. By practicing in the virtual set up, students can gain proficiency before working on actual sites, resulting in reduced consumable usage and minimized fumes.