Shiksha Daan – Gift of Education is an activity of FICA which was started in 2013. Our objective is to get the local area Indian community members more involved with the education and development of underprivileged youth and adults in the Greater Cleveland area. We achieve our mission by conducting our own tutoring programs and partnering with other non-profit organizations which are working in this area.
Thanks for your continued support in helping us keep Shiksha Daan strong in 2021. We specially want to thank all our volunteers and donors for their valuable support. Overall Shiksha Daan volunteers gave over 1200 hours of their time in 2021 in tutoring/mentoring students through our own program and through programs of our partners: College Now, Refugee Response, Seeds of Literacy and Youth Opportunities Unlimited. Thanks to our donors we were able to provide $1000 worth of school supplies for children in the Salvation Army Family Homeless Shelter, and $1000 each to our partners Refugee Response, Seeds of Literacy and Youth Opportunities Unlimited to support their education and training programs.
With the help of two high school students, Manav Malik and Saija Shah, under the guidance of our committee member Prashant Subramanian, we were able to establish a new website: www.shikshadaan.org. Please visit this website if you are interested in: learning more about our activities: volunteering for one of our programs; and/or donating to Shiksha Daan. You can also click here to donate to Shiksha Daan. Shiksha Daan is an activity of FICA which is a 501(c)(3) organization, and your contributions to Shiksha Daan are tax deductible.
Below is a brief update on our 2021 activities. Please feel free to reach out to us at shikshadaan.fica@gmail.com if you have any questions regarding our activities and how you can participate. We are currently looking for a couple of new committee members who will help our programs grow and be more effective. Please contact us if you are interested in taking a more active role in helping with the mission of Shiksha Daan.
I will like to reiterate that we highly appreciate the strong support we have received from the community which has enabled us to continue with our mission. We hope that the new year will be joyous and fulfilling for you.
2021 activities update:
•Online tutoring – We continued our online tutoring program with 13 students enrolled in the spring semester and 14 students in the fall semester. The Shiksha Daan volunteers provide one-on-one online tutoring to a student for two hours a week. The focus on the tutoring is to help the students with English and Math literacy and also help them with their homework. The feedback from the parents is that they find the tutoring very helpful for their children and the students are doing better in schools since they started the tutoring with Shiksha Daan. The volunteer tutors have also stated that they enjoy working with the students and seeing them make progress.
•College Now Mentoring - we had 18 Shiksha Daan volunteers serving as mentors for college students. Thirteen of them are currently mentoring students while some are waiting to be assigned a new student for the 2022-23 academic year. The mentors spend 1-2 hours per month interacting with their mentees via e-mail or phone. They enjoy the interaction with the students and helping them succeed in college. Shiksha Daan volunteer Mala Garg was selected to be one of the two College Now Mentors of the Year for 2021.
•Refugee Response - We have 3 volunteers currently serving as mentors in the Refugee Response Youth Mentoring Program which is for students in grades 2 to 8 who are from refugee families settled in the Cleveland area. These mentors spend two hours a week interacting online with the student assigned to them, helping them with school work, English literacy, and emotional development.
•Seeds of Literacy – We have 3 active Shiksha Daan volunteers serving as tutors for adults who are working on completing their high school equivalency diploma. The volunteer tutors spend at least one hour each week doing online tutoring. •Volunteer Recognition – We were not able to hold our annual volunteer appreciation luncheon again this year due to the COVID situation. However, thanks to one of our generous donors, we were able to provide Amazon gift cards to all our active volunteers as a small token of our appreciation.
Learn more about FICA's Shiksha Daan
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