Monday, April 25, 2016

SOIL Esha team wins the best outgoing SIP Team - 2016! Celebration Time!!

It is our pleasure and privilege to share that our Social Innovation Program team from #SOIL - School of Inspired Leadership, has won the Best Outgoing SIP Team this year. This is an honour well deserved by the team - that worked really hard all through the year on everything that Esha does, and then some more - Blind Walk, Social Media Management, Tour De Vision, doing Braille cards, and other projects.
Please join us in congratulating Rethina Kumar, Vigneshwar Ganesan, Cauvery Jalan and Saranya Balasubramanian - for being the rock stars that they have been! Thank you Atindra Nath Bhattacharya sir and the entire SOIL team for your encouragement. And of course, Randonneur Rajesh Dhuddu for his awesome mentoring.
To celebrate their journey with Esha, they have created a special video covering everything that they did:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SaYggRDCD8M
And to hear their experience , we recommend that you head to Esha's Youtube channel, where videos of their feedback, and of the previous batch, are uploaded:
https://www.youtube.com/user/eshabraille/videos

Saturday, April 9, 2016

The Esha Summer Project 2016 is here!!

This year, the Esha Summer Project is really, realy big. Its 5 times the size of the earlier Summer Projects, includes 6 types of volunteering options, can be done from home or the field, and in general, will change the scale of our Summer Project, making it one of our strategic activities in the year.

This year, we are announcing the Summer Project through a video.

The video sums up all our volunteering options, AND everything u need to know about Esha - in case this is the first time you are hearing of us.

So go on, do spread the word! Let the Summer Project Begin!


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_WI0FnlKEM
PS: Like every year, students will get certificates that can be used to demonstrate community contribution in college admissions.

Friday, April 1, 2016

E Book Reading App for Android - Free

Here is  a communication from Sparsh Products - sharing as received.

 Dear Friends,

  We are pleased to inform you that the ebook reading app "Accessible Reader"  is now being provided free of cost by Amway Opportunity Foundation. It is the world's only accessible ebook reading software with all the navigation features which is available free of cost and the rest are paid apps. Please   download the same from playstore. Given below is the link:




https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.AmwayOpportunityFoundation
  .accessiblereader


   The main features of the app are given below:
   1. Read your txt, rtf, doc, docx and pdf files with complete
  navigation.
  2. It Supports Hindi, English and many other languages. Just have the
  compatible TTS engine for the language and you can read the same. For
  example for Hindi you can use Google Hindi, Lekha or espeak tts & for
  English you can use eloquence or any other English tts engine.
  3. Change your navigation mode between word, sentence, paragraph and
  page.
  4. Go to the desired page instantly with the help of "go to page"
  option.
  5. Repeat command repeats the word, line, paragraph or page at which
  the current navigation is set to.
  6. Increase or decrease the reading speed instantly.
  7. Play/Pause button.
  8. Read All button. It would start the reading continuously.
  9. Status. It displays the percentage of the file you have read.
  10. Page. It displays on which page you currently are
  11. It keeps the history of last 10 files which you have opened and
  remembers the position on which you closed the file and would resume from
  the same place.
  12. It remembers the navigation mode, TTS engine and your reading speed
  which you were using for that particular file.
  13. Select the TTS engine and voice for that particular file before
  opening.
  14. The software is activated via internet. It supports deactivation
  also.
  15. If you wish to change your handset just deactivate the software and
  activate it again on another handset. The application will remain with you
  for lifetime.
  16. No adds

 In case of any query please do share with us.

  With regards,

 Abhinav

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
  Sparsh Products
  151-5, Rajpur Road, Jakhan Mandir,
  Dehradun 248001, India

  Mobile: 91-9837088334
  Email: info@sparshproducts.com

  sparshproducts@gmail.com

  www.sparshproducts.com <http://www.sparshproducts.com/>

 
www.sparshbraille.com <http://www.sparshproducts.com/>

Friday, March 11, 2016

CLABIL Outreach Program - Agrasar at Islampur Village, Gurgaon

Yesterday, we took the CLABIL Outreach Program to the Agrasar Center at Islampur village, Gurgaon.

It was an amazing experience. The school itself is run so beautifully, using the Montessori pedagogy and very engaging educational methods. I was totally overawed.

There were 38 children there listening to the content. They loved English Hindi stories, Akbar Birbal stories, and some of them liked Magic Maths.



 

Wednesday, March 9, 2016

Online Audio Library - CLABIL - now crosses 5000 files

Today, we moved the catalogue from 4916 to 5014 files - 98 files added to the library, with more on the way.

The current batch upload has content in Hindi, Oriya, Bengali, Punjabi  and English.

The content includes Oriya academic content, lots of GK quizzes in English and stories in Bengali. Hindi has some more children's poetry added today.

Enjoy! And do share your feedback!
 

The CLABIL Outreach Program is Underway!

In December this year, we had one of our audacious dreams. We dreamt that we want to take CLABIL directly to a large population that can benefit from it directly. The idea was to test the hypothesis that we can make a difference to people by giving them free access to knowledge content in their own language - without needing to read.

CLABIL Outreach Project in Delhi NCR Region, upto March 2016

Am happy to share this - we have done some extensive work around this outreach project since January 1.

The pics are in the collage above, but they really don't do justice to what we actually saw!

In other news, we also did a Braille session on March 5th at the Galleria Market, Gurgaon.
Learn Braille in 15 minutes!
 

Monday, February 22, 2016

Guest Post by Toshit Chouhan, Student, B.A., L.Lb (Honours)

Toshit has worked on the CLABIL outreach program for 20 days in February, taking the content where it is most needed - directly to our intended beneficiaries -without the need to depend on the govt, or a program. We have decided to take the content and take the direct feedback of our beneficiaries, and to use that feedback to create a more useful resource - in design, content and distribution.



अक्सर जब मैं अपनी जिन्द्दगी में खुशियाँ देखता हूँ
मुझे मेरी अम्मी जान का चेहरा नज़र आ जाता है
मेरा दिल भर आता है, एक ख्याल हमेशा मुझे सताता है
ना जाने कब मैं अपने पैरों पर खड़ा होकर , तेरे कुछ काम आ पाऊंगा माँ
ना जाने कब , जो कुछः तूने और धरती माँ ने मेरी थाली में परोसा है ,
उसको सूद समेत लौटा पाऊंगा माँ

ना जाने कब, इस देश के कुछ काम आ पाऊंगा मा

I was overwhelmed with my comfortable life and getting treated with +A grade education, a thought always killed me from inside that a huge population of our country  still has no access to education. And just as my poetry explains I decided to step out of my comfort zone and planned to take my after semester internship with an NGO so that I can start my journey of serving the nation. I always wanted to be in Delhii as it is a home to our constituency. Here, in the selection process of choosing an NGO to start my work,  I was highly inspired by my cousin brother Gaurav bhaiya, who has always kept himself involved in community services and continues to do so. He had read about Esha and recommended me for the same. I got through the screening and the interview process and was invited by Nidhi  mam onboard,  who gave me the golden opportunity to work with ESHA.

Which I will confess, working with ESHA for 20 days has brought a huge change in my life.

I got to meet mrs, Geeta who narrated her story, And how she battled with the domestice violence she faced at home and took a decision to leave her house for the welfare of her new born daughter.

I also met Mr. Nath who lived in an old age home, he narrated  the untold story of how an old age home in reality works and many a problems that go unheard and unnoticed by the people.

 Being a law student, it was very important for me to know where my country lacks legal awareness, so that I can take an initiative to spread the same. While I was working for ESHA I felt very proud when I saw the students from the poor  and the underprivileged sections waited for my ESHA story telling classes. They welcomed me with a huge smile, and my send off was always a standing ovation.  The field work taught me the struggle, I got the chance  to meet 1000+ people in my 20 days work, 1000+ strangers who taught me a lesson that one should always take some step to start sharing one’s  fortune to make the lesser fortunate people in the society a chance to be happy, to be able to bring stability in the society. And I feel happy that I was able to make an effort to educate 1000+ people through ESHA library. For this I extend my heartfelt gratitude to Nidhi mam who gave me an opportunity to be a part of ESHA family.
Band ankhoo se sapne dekhna sekh liya hai.. Sapne purey kerne k liye mahnet kerna sekh liya hai.

Wednesday, February 17, 2016

CLABIL outreach @ Sai Bhoomi - Kanhai Village and Rao Ram Singh School - Sector 45 !!!

After our exciting journey with Tour de Vision we have geared up for CLABIL outreach project with Esha. The day one of the outreach program was very eventful. We were able to receive the feedbacks and observations of 50 kids, also educating them with topics they weren’t aware of, through our audio books. The audience was 8th standard students from Rao Ram Singh High School and Primary kids from Soil Alumni Initiative (SAI) Bhoomi. The diverse feedback, views and observation recorded today will be extremely helpful for the team to keep in mind while collecting/recording audio files in future. 

The prominent feedback from the Rao Ram Singh School in Kanhai Village, Sector 45 Gurgaon was that the language used in few of the audio files (Hindi/English) was quite rich. It would have been further effective if the contents are recorded using simpler vocabulary. The students also said slowing down the speech rate would help them in grasping the content, as they get quite distracted while listening to an audio file. The School uses Hindi as a medium of instruction, hence the students were able to receive the contents in Hindi much effectively than the English files with rich vocabulary. 

Apart from meeting the objective of the project, the experience we had at both the schools were amazing. The students were very supportive and the energy they displayed was infectious that has boosted us to further proceed with the project.

We asked the students basic questions related to the content to know if they had prior knowledge about the subject. ‘Fundamental duties of an Indian Citizen’ was one such. The students had very basic knowledge about the same, post listening to the audio for a couple of times they were able to summarize and point out the sections and the duties.


SAI Bhoomi kids enjoyed the Akbar Birbal stories and they also had complete fun reciting the poems and panchatantra stories.  
Rao Ram Singh School @ Sector 45 Gurgaon 

Rao Ram Singh School @ Sector 45 Gurgaon 

Kids at SAI BHOOMI - Kanhai Village reciting rhymes

Students with eyes closed listening to the audio content