The idea/program overview
The SIFF Scholars program is a Scholarship cum Mentorship program that aims at addressing the achievement gap that persists for children from low income homes in Bangalore. The program encompasses a financial support plan while mentoring motivated students to grow into confident, sensitive and responsible adults. Started in the year 2016, we added 19 incredibly talented children into our first batch of SIFF Scholars. Most of the scholars will be first generation college goers. This, we believe could have the potential to not only transform the lives of these children but create a ripple effect to positively impact their families and the larger community. Our program is run in a specialised learning centre housed in a low income school in Varthur, Bangalore. We operate a comprehensive in school and after school program covering all aspect of curriculum, sports, arts, music and personal leadership skills.
Our Learning Philosophy
We believe in a holistic learning approach that transcends textbook education. Through our project, we don’t just educate our students. We help them learn. We train and mentor the students to mold them into considerate, confident and responsible adults. This goes towards building leadership qualities manifested right from classrooms to larger communities. In the long run, we aim to build an ecosystem that identifies and nurtures students who can progress into changemakers within their communities and beyond.
Teaching & Learning
We believe in a holistic learning approach that transcends textbook education. Through our project, we don’t just educate our students. We help them learn. We train and mentor the students to mold them into considerate, confident and responsible adults. This goes towards building leadership qualities manifested right from classrooms to larger communities. In the long run, we aim to build an ecosystem that identifies and nurtures students who can progress into changemakers within their communities and beyond.
Faculty, Advisors & Mentors
We employ teaching strategies that combine teaching and learning for the best outcomes. Our trained teachers use an amalgamation of research-based teaching and learning techniques from around the world. Be it audio-visual learning, group activities like Jigsaw, individual exercises or discussions with people from different professions, every day is engaging and stimulating for each child.
We use block scheduling method for lessons to maximize understanding of a given topic. Further, each class is broken into 20-minute segments to maximize the primetime to downtime ratio to increase retention. While we explore different subjects like Math, English, Science, & Social studies we also focus on developing critical thinking, reasoning, curiosity, and articulate thoughts through effective communication. We don’t believe in cramming facts to educate children. There is a significant effort that goes into helping students understand ‘how to learn’.
Sports & Fitness
We believe sports induce healthy physical, social, & emotional development in children while encouraging teamwork and problem-solving skills. Sports is known to provide children with the perfect outlet to keep them fit while teaching them valuable life skills. At SIFF, we provide every child with an opportunity to pick two sports that they truly enjoy and wish to pursue. Our children are currently being trained in Football and Badminton. Just For Kicks, a football league in which the children are enrolled not only brings out the hidden potential amongst students but also trains them to be dedicated, active and focused.
Art & Music
Today, art & music are a distinctive part of any education. Learning gets better and expands through creativity. The experience of making decisions and choices in the course of creating art and music carries over into other parts of life. At SIFF, we integrate this into the mainstream subjects to make learning fun and allow creativity to blossom. We believe children express best through music and creating arts. They develop a sense of innovation that augments their thinking and reasoning abilities. Our students at SIFF enjoy Bharatanatyam, Singing, Storytelling, & Craft.
Socio-Emotional Learning
We have a team of well-trained child-counselors with expertise in social-emotional learning. They work with children both individually and in groups to bring about self-awareness, sense of expression, and confidence to deal with challenges they might face both at home, school and outside of it. Our counselors and mentors work with the children to understand the overall environment the child is coming from which also involves meeting with the parents at their home and the various interventions that we provide to ensure our students have the best of learning in a conducive environment.
Access and exposure (visitors, trips, interactions, competitions)
Events and field trips the children have been a part of:
- This year our children participated in The Neev Children’s Literature Festival and learnt the art of story telling, comic making, ideas generation with well known writers. Our Student Nishchay’s short story was selected for a children’s compilation that was curated at the festival.
- Our children took a trip to watch Bangalore School of Speech and Drama’s annual production- Chronicles of Narnia- The lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
- As a part of understanding our Model Urban Village project, SIFF Scholars met and interacted with the children at the Deverabeesanahalli Government School.
- Our Student Tulasi participated in Teach For india’s Regional Summit on a student panel to discuss the power of student voices in education.
- Our girls and boys have been playing in the under 12 Just For Kicks football league. Our students Deekshit and Sripriya won the man of the match awards for multiple matches.