Goal:

Enlighten the communities and harness IT to support inquiry-based quality education to help them reach their maximum potential. As well as equitable breakthroughs for poverty alleviation and human resource development ensuring equal gender access in a diverse population.

Specific Objective:

To provide IT out reach through schools for children (from 5 to 16 years male/female) and adults (from 17 to 40 years male/female) from the disadvantaged communities, rural/urban poor so as to provide them with access to quality IT education to meet the need of the hour. The focus is primarily on disadvantaged female children.

General Objectives:

• Empower students in relevant use of IT to facilitate effective learning through improved access to information and knowledge.
• To enhance broader learning by youth with IT to develop tolerance, social harmony, empowerment, harmony and human rights.
• To access IT school laboratory as an additional learning source for the surrounding community such as out of school adults /youth.
• To improve the quality of education by using IT as a tool for teachers and students.
• To introduce teachers to the utilization of computers as a medium of instruction and improved school management.
• Train teachers in IT with skills necessary to provide training for potentially the entire teaching staff at the institute.

Amanut Hands makes available a working computer lab including Personal Computers and network installation free of cost to the partner school. In each partner school Amanut Hands will provide one complete computer lab with following specifications:

• Workstations (refurbished), quantity based on requirement (up to 20 PCs)
• 1 Laser Printer (new)
• Networking, transpiration and installation

Note: Requirements may vary depending upon size of institution.

The objective here is to empower teachers to update their teaching practices and methodologies with the use of ICT to enhance learning outcomes of students. Amanut Trust provides teachers with access to various training materials available through our Partners. Furthermore, the trained teachers will become master trainers and will initiate a train the trainer program within their respective institutes.
Teachers will be trained by using ICT as a Tool for improvement of quality of education. Intel (www.intel.com/education ) has a comprehensive program that integrates technology into teaching to enhance students learning.

The aim is to:

• Integrate technology into student curriculum and assessment
• Integrate technology effectively in classroom processes
• Motivate students to excel in IT
• Encourage critical thinking, teamwork and analysis

IT Courses for general public will be offered in the evening, weekends and vacations for a minimal fee (assessed by the partner institution) which will go towards the maintenance and upgrade of the lab in the future. These courses are intended for adults with little or no computer experience. It covers basic computer topics that are essential for the use of computers in all fields of study. Topics covered include: basic computer hardware, software and IT terminology; operating system basics; word-processing basics; communications and email.

Our programs help:

• Communities to bridge the digital divide and provide the less privileged a level playing field in the economy
• Provide opportunities for learning technology skills while increasing community involvement
• Serve as a vehicle to exchange of ideas and resource between privileged and unprivileged members of society

Monitoring and Evaluation:

Each technical service provider would have scope of work and defined terms of reference and coordination responsibilities. Each would achieve a set of performance outcomes with specific indicators to measure successful interventions.

I. Monitoring Indicator:

• Process Monitoring Indicator
• School selected as per criteria
• Lab establishment
• IT Curriculum Developed
• Number of School Children Taking IT courses
• Number of Adult taking IT courses
• Operational sustainability of the Lab
• Number of Teacher trained

II. Impact Monitoring Indicator

• Improvement in Success rate
• Computer Literacy rate improved
• Teacher teaching performance Improved
• Improvement in Retention rate
• Dropout rate decreased
• Community participation in school improved