Tata Steel Foundation Inks Pact With NGOs To Boost Education Among Children

Tata Steel Foundation on Friday said it has inked pacts with non-profit bodies - KMCO and CIF

in a bid to boost education among underprivileged children and youth in Jamshedpur.

All three organisations have been engaged in running high impact projects in the education and technical training sectors.

TSF's education initiative apart from 'Masti ki Pathshala' include the 'Thousand Schools Programme' that operate in Odisha and Jharkhand reaching out to 5 lakh students and aim to bring back children to school through strengthening the education and monitoring systems.

"Tata Steel Foundation (TSF) signed two Memorandum of Understanding (MoUs) with Kudy Mahanty Chirens' Opportunities (KMCO) Trust and Cummins India Foundation (CIF) today in an attempt to garner opportunities in the education sector," TSF said in a statement.

The MoU with KMCO, a Jamshedpur-based charitable trust founded in memory of Kudy Mahanty in the year 2000, was signed by Sourav Roy, Chief, Corporate Social Responsibility, Tata Steel and Smita Agarwal, Head (Education) on behalf of Tata Steel and Niroop Mohanty, President, KMCO and Rupa Mahanty, Chairperson, KMCO on behalf the Trust, in presence of Ruchi Narendran.

The one-year partnership with KMCO aims to undertake various developmental projects for underprivileged children residing in urban slums of the city, the statement said.

As a part of the partnership, KMCO will undertake the provision of tablets to schools under 'Masti Ki Pathshala'. This program, operated by Tata Steel Foundation, enables a learning bridge between schools and children from slums of Jamshedpur through residential and non-residential schools, with the sole purpose of making the city a child-labour free zone.

The MoU is intended to equip these centres digitally to ensure smooth and continuous learning practices for the students.

The agreement will also enable a roll out of a non-residential bridge course for children residing in slum areas along the 4km stretch of Marine Drive. There are a total of 15 slums in this stretch that house more than 800 children who have either dropped out of schools or are highly irregular, the statement said.

With domain expertise in the field, the Foundation has partnered with KMCO for building a special course of six months and bringing the kids back to schools, it added.

The statement said that the MoU with Cummins India Foundation was signed by Sourav Roy, Chief, Corporate Social Responsibility, Tata Steel on behalf of the Foundation and Amit Kumar, Trustee, CIF.

The partnership with CIF will work towards special skill training of students at Tata Steel Technical Institute (TSTI) to provide industrial training to local youths.

CIF runs a Technical Education for Communities (TEC) programme which is a global initiative that targets the technical skill gap through local vocational education initiatives and the partnership will ensure training of around 270 local youths.

Under the collaboration, a standardized education platform will be delivered that will help the institute develop market-relevant curriculum, teachers' training, career guidance and the practical experience that the students will.

Speaking on the occasion, Roy said: Masti ki Pathshala is an effort to create a citizen's movement to persistently and meaningfully use education as a means for the most underserved children and youth of Jamshedpur to transform their lives. Our partnerships with KMCO and CIF will not only work towards bringing children back to schools but also increase employment opportunities of youths through the highest quality of vocational instruction.

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