Professional Documents
Culture Documents
REPORT
2022
Table of Contents
1 Editorial
2 Methodology
3 Education
17 Public Health
19 Team Updates
21 Financials
22 CEO's Note
A country's economy grows when more people enter We made the kind of impact we didn't think was
the workforce. To reap the benefits of the unique possible for a small non-profit and the humbling
demographics of the soon-to-be most populous compassion of human beings helped us persevere. The
country, it is imperative to impart high-quality lived experience of working through a Pandemic had
education to the 200M children attending primary made us realize that to make a more lasting impact in
schools and provide economic opportunities to the lives of the most vulnerable within society, our
women who have been mainly homemakers. The model needed to incorporate other critical
purpose of OBLF during the first decade of existence development pillars as well – especially Healthcare, and
was just that - to focus on those two pillars of Rehabilitation of the Severely Marginalized groups. We
development. We built a model to use the were back to the drawing board.
infrastructure of the existing schools and ran a
program that would enable the children to New Directions
comprehend education better. This would alleviate Like any other organization which seeks to grow,
the massive learning deficits reported year on year evolve, and thrive, a non-profit too must constantly
and reduce dropouts which in turn would result in evaluate its direction, identify opportunities & gaps,
more young adults finding meaningful employment. build on its capabilities, and set higher goals for
Our model was also built on identifying, engaging, impact. Over the course of the last year, we have
and building teaching capacity in women from the started a public health initiative for the last mile
rural communities around the schools and delivery of health services, especially in the early
subsequently employing them as Community screening, diagnosis, treatment, and management of
Teachers. This was a pivotal part of the model which non-communicable diseases [NCDs]. It is no secret that
enabled these women to enter the workforce and in India, NCDs – especially Diabetes and Hypertension -
have a meaningful and respectable livelihood. are a silent epidemic. OBLF now has a strong,
grassroots program in place to address this amongst
The Path to Transformation the most marginalized and rural communities. We have
2020 and 2021 were unprecedented years, with the also started work with a large tribal group settled on
pandemic. Schools were closed, communities had no the outskirts of the National Forest and are engaged
food due to lost livelihoods during the lockdowns, with them in providing primary health services, Mental
and the health care system was overwhelmed due to health services, and Life Skills for Youth in the
the horrific surge in Covid 19 cases. We were in the community
business of doing good and couldn’t be mere
witnesses to the calamity that was unfolding. It was Our Path Forward
a new book for us to write in, but we raised the bar Building this comprehensive community development
each year. From building Oxygen plants and approach and validating it in our geographical area of
intensive care units in public healthcare facilities to operation will pave the way for us to replicate this
vaccinate more than 15,000 people, to providing model in other Indian states and potentially in other
much-needed humanitarian assistance to the countries. For us, it has been a wild, and exciting ride
severely marginalized, to creating awareness and and we believe we are poised for exponential growth!
providing medical supplies to front-line workers, we
left no stone unturned to save lives in the 220+ Anamika Majumder Anish Ramachandran
villages we work in. Founder, OBLF CEO (Hon), OBLF
EDUCATION
Availability & Access to good quality
education including overall emotional
and psychological development.
ENVIRONMENT LIVELIHOOD & LABOUR
& INDUSTRY PARTICIPATION RATE
Evidence of Availability &
sustainable Access to
environmental mechanisms that
practices and a create livelihood;
thriving aware including support
industry that systems that
contributes to enable higher
positive practices. LFPR.
COMMUNITY AS
INTERCONNECTED
SOCIAL
CONNECTIONS
SYSTEMS
PUBLIC
& NETWORKS
HEALTH
Social health of
Availability & Access
the community as
to predictable and
measured by connections,
good quality primary
healthy social networks,
and preventive
community engagement
health, including
& ownership, crime, etc.
water, sanitation,
immunization, etc.
MARGINALISATION & POVERTY
Level of marginalization of populations based on
poverty, religious factors, access to citizenship
rights, and state benefits.
The Enrich Pre-Primary Education (EPPE) Program is an initiative by Key Education Foundation to set up and run
pre-primary classrooms in 20 government schools in Anekal Taluk, Bangalore. The program is a part of efforts
to create a block-level model of excellence for pre-primary education in Karnataka.
In collaboration with Key Education Foundation, OBLF has extended this program across five schools in Anekal
Taluk, and has worked on improving the existing infrastructure across these schools. 2021-22 marked the first
year of the program where we set up the classrooms, enrolled students, implemented the state pre-primary
curriculum, hired and trained teachers, and invested the community in the program. Initially architectured as an
experimental pilot to bridge visible learning gaps, this initiative has developed into a well-received impactful
initiative.
This past year has been focused on bridging the learning deficit propagated by the pandemic, and we found
children facing larger gaps in knowledge coupled with lower attention and retention in the classroom. To this
end, we began our academic year conducting robust bridge sessions that would reacquaint the students with
English basics, followed by a screening test to ensure accurate learning levels for each student. We also
conducted a Baseline assessment for the students under these CEFR levels across the six English skills –
Listening, Speaking, Reading, Writing, Vocabulary & Grammar. 88% of the students were present for the
assessment. More than half the students scored lower than or equal to 40%, and only 13% of students scored
over 70%, thus supporting our hypothesis for an interactive universally recognized standard of curriculum to
advance English proficiency in primary classes.
Students educated
92
6 2 0 06200+
+ 92 69
ONE BILLION LITERATES FOUNDATION | Page 5
EDUCATION-BASED
TECH INITIATIVES
ONE BILLION LITERATES FOUNDATION | Page 6
OBLF'S ED TECH LEARNING PROGRAM
IN COLLABORATION WITH SOLVE EDUCATION
IMPACT
Students engaged Schools covered Teacher's employed
750+ 15 12
OBLF has a strong belief that engaging and investing women from the community in its social development
programs is a uniquely sustainable way to create long term impact. As part of this, OBLF identifies, trains and
creates capacity, and subsequently employs these women in its programs in Education and Public Health.
Over the last year, our training team has been focused on analyzing student learning outcomes and
evaluating and identifying on-ground training needs for our teachers. This has led us to create a teacher
training framework that has transitioned from an individualistic trainer-centric approach to a cohesive
organizational teacher-centric training. Our training programs are now targeted to inculcate four primary
competencies in our teachers:
English Professional
Curriculum
Language Pedagogy & Personal
Mastery
Proficiency Leadership
A crucial breakthrough for us has been recognizing the need for uniform content delivery across
competencies and training batches. To this end, we initiated multiple training product stack developments to
be conducted by our trainers in the academic year 2022-2023. These include a comprehensive skill-
focused English Language Proficiency [ELP] program, an accelerated learning program for our Pre-A1 (Basic)
teachers to provide them additional support, and Pedagogy sessions centred on the principles of classroom
culture, management, and lesson planning. Lastly, we also introduced teacher conferences are a mechanism
to collaborate, ideate with and celebrate our teachers and their journey as both learners and knowledge
imparters. This first conference was held in November 2021 and was a teacher-favorite, with the teachers
participating enthusiastically.
TEACHER ASSESSMENT
With an increased emphasis on universally recognized and high-impact models of learning, we have
shifted focus on upskilling our teachers beyond their proficiency, as educators imparting the CEFR
curriculum. This year, we developed and conducted a teacher evaluation to measure their
performance across the competencies identified and introduced across the training. The
assessment would also allow us to assign teachers to specific CEFR-leveled classrooms based on
their competencies and strengths. We conducted a baseline assessment for 60 teachers in
September 2021. The assessment process involved multiple methods of assessing them in these
areas such as a written assessment, group discussions, interviews, and demo classes.
Measuring outcomes of social interventions is an incredibly important and integral part of strong
programs. They provide an opportunity to get critical insights, validate (or disprove) hypotheses,
and inform action. But conducting these also requires investments of time, energy, and resources.
One Billion Literates Foundation recently concluded our first ever external, independent impact
measurement study of our work with rural women to engage, skill, create capacity, and employ
them – thus driving sustainable livelihood via contextually relevant and respectable jobs. The study
looks at the impact on five verticals:
The results are encouraging and definitely inspiring! As important as the quantitative results are – it
was also equally heart-warming to hear about the personal accounts of the impact on their lives.
Methodology
QUANTITATIVE QUALITITATIVE
An online survey of all 60 Six Focused Group Discussions
respondents conducted to were conducted at three locations.
capture profile information
In-depth Interviews with 7
A face-to-face interview was respondents, based on their
conducted with all 60 respondents responses from the quantitative
to understand the impact of the surveys.
program.
Impact on Employment,
01 Income & Livelihood
Capacity creation
& Skilling enabled
side-gigs for some
70% 83% respondents bringing
in an additional
average income of
INR 6000 per month.
02 Impact on Communication
Skills & Confidence
98%
Respondents reported feeling ‘Very Confident’ in
their own personal abilities, post joining OBLF
88%
Respondents reported that the program made them
‘Very Confident’ in their English Communication Skills
92%
Respondents feel ‘very confident’ now to make
key decisions on financial matters independently
04 Impact on Awareness of
Social Issues
83%
83% reported an overall increase in knowledge about social
issues (gender, safety, etc) – and being acknowledged for
this knowledge within family & community circles
Yes
Yes 83.4% Yes
95% 94%
0 25 50 75 100 125
The crisis did not break them down, it brought them all together to meet the societal
needs more than ever… While each of us was struggling with our own agonies, our efforts
and willingness to be there for all as a human community never faded . True to the spirit,
the employees of Thomson Reuters, Intel, Rubrik, Guardian Life, Caterpillar, and a team
from CISCO strengthen corporate citizenship with compassion, promising ideas and
unparalleled energy to support the humongous task of ensuring 70000+ children from the
rural community of Anekal Taluk could continue with their education. 100+ teachers who
have been effortlessly been trying to impart the learning to these children were hugely
relieved to receive the teaching materials created by the volunteers. While we had many
first-timers, others have repeatedly chosen to volunteer with us.
IMPACT
No of Volunteers Hours volunteered Live impacted
Fund +
SBIN0000691 Excess of 8,36,546.87 6,27,41,015.16 Fixed Assets 22,606.39 16,95,479.42
Income over
0431101203551
6,52,93,117.2
8,70,574.89
8,70,574.89 6,52,93,117.20
FCRA Utilisation 0
Account Number:
0431101206628
IFSC Code: CONSOLIDATED INCOME & EXPENDITURE ACCOUNT FOR
CNRB0000431 THE YEAR ENDED 31ST MARCH 2022
Sankalpa
Sreenidhi Layout Purchase
Interest 23,993.31 17,99,498.00
of Products
Lakshmisagar,
Hale Chandapura. Project
9,08,440.59 68133044.480 Others 5.35 401.00
Bangalore – Expenses
560107 Closing
Management
Contact Number: Expenses
45,326.60 33,99,495.01 Value 1,507.57 1,13,067.39
of Products
+91 9845119023
Depreciation 8,729.88 6,54,741.08
LEGAL: Excess Of
Legal, Registered Income Over 6,21,845.47 4,66,38,410.61
Expenditure
Charitable Trust u/s
12AA
15,85,952.42 11,89,46,431.57
15,85,952.42 11,89,46,431.57
FCRA Approved
IT - 80 G Approved
ONE BILLION LITERATES FOUNDATION | Page 21
CEO’S NOTE
I am often asked if I think that life will go back to how it was during the pre-pandemic days. My
response always is that it doesn’t really matter. Last year, in my note, I had written that we will
keep ourselves open to new possibilities and new journeys. So, indeed, what really matters is
how our experiences have changed us – as individuals and as a society.
For One Billion Literates Foundation, this has been a period of profound evolution and growth.
Our approach and thinking about how we create impact in the communities we work with has
changed profoundly. We have been living witnesses to communities as inter-connected and
interdependent systems; and how change in one dimension can have a perceptible and
powerful impact in another. It is this reflection on our lived experiences that has compelled us to
think about scale in a very different way. Now, for us, scale comes from a belief that for
communities to be uplifted and thrive each dimension or constituent needs to have adequate
attention and focus.
And, this belief has taken us on a journey where we have forayed into new paths and avenues,
even as we have doubled down on our investments in Primary Education, and Women’s skilling
and Livelihood. We are very excited by the possibilities ahead – especially with the launch of our
work in Public Health, as also our work with severely Marginalized Communities.
The potential for each of these dimensions of community well-being to have a profound impact
on the other is immense; and we stay committed to doing what we do best – be driven by
purpose, passion and professionalism.
Anish Ramachandran
CEO (Hon)