EdIndia Foundation, the strategic CSR arm of Sterlite Power, has announced its partnership with the UNESCO Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Education for Peace and Sustainable Development (UNESCO MGIEP), to train more than 10,000 teachers in India.

This partnership will enable government teachers across India to leverage digital tools and integrate socio-emotional context while teaching. While the training on Digital Learning will help build competence to use technology, to enhance choice and engagement, the course on SEL (Social and Emotional Learning) will equip teachers with a rich pool of hands-on learning activities to enhance students’ performance. The objective of this training intervention is to build a pool of certified master trainers and key academic resources out of state teachers’ cadre. The training intervention shall be in the form of a self-paced interactive certificate module developed by the UNESCO MGIEP.

Ayan Chatterjee, Head – EdIndia said, “UNESCO MGIEP and EdIndia will work together to organize a series of online workshops for Master Trainers. They, in turn, will train government teachers, both in-service and pre-service, with whom EdIndia is working with, across Rajasthan, Tripura, Uttarakhand, Chhattisgarh and Maharashtra.”

Speaking about the partnership, Dr. Anantha Duraiappah, Director, UNESCO MGIEP expressed, “We are pleased to partner with EdIndia to train 10,000 teachers in Digital Learning and SEL to impart skills which are really the need of the hour in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. Digital learning is here to stay – and it really needs to go beyond the regular PDFs and PowerPoint presentations towards a more pedagogical, immersive, and engaging experience for the young. Skills in digital teacher training are critical for learning in the metaverse. Furthermore, SEL will help build emotional resilience for teachers and students in this ever-changing uncertain world.”

Sonakshi Agarwal, Director, Sterlite EdIndia Foundation (EdIndia), said, “We are excited about the potential of this partnership. This comes at a crucial time when the need for schools to integrate SEL into their curriculum and for teachers to leverage digital learning is greater than ever.”

According to the company’s press release during the pandemic, EdIndia Foundation, partnered with various state education departments to build teacher capacity on digital pedagogy, training more than 2 lac teachers across 40,000+ government schools. Prioritizing government schoolteachers, EdIndia conducted 56 virtual capacity building sessions around the usage of digital tools and pedagogy. These learning sessions enabled teachers to adapt to a remote learning environment, indirectly benefitting more than 4 million students across various states in India. EdIndia is exploring partnerships to scale up their innovative projects in the domain of pre-services teacher capacity building and building data driven educational eco-systems.

Also read: Why teacher training is indispensable for schools