Over the past three months, Team4Tech facilitated an impactful skilled volunteering project connecting ten employees from Guidewire Software with staff from Ek Tara, an education-focused nongovernmental organization (NGO) based in India. After months of virtual collaboration, skilled volunteers traveled to Kolkata, India to support Ek Tara with the implementation of a monitoring and evaluation platform and the development and delivery of training modules to help teachers and staff with digital literacy and learning management systems.
Elevating the Position of Girls in Kolkata
In Kolkata, India, girls living in under-resourced communities face barriers to securing quality education. Ek Tara supports these girls through a holistic education model, providing access to skill building and high-quality learning experiences. Through the Ek Tara Learning Center, students have access to a safe and nurturing learning environment with opportunities in STEM, music, and the arts. Ek Tara also delivers programs including Ek Tara Creates and Annam to ensure a sustained income generation platform for women in the community through vocational training and a community kitchen respectively. Ek Tara is currently serving more than 1200 students across their programming, helping girls and women to break cycles of intergenerational poverty and deep-rooted patriarchy.
Skilled Volunteering Drives Data-Driven Decision-Making for Ek Tara
The Guidewire Gives Back program enables Guidewire employees to drive meaningful change in local communities where they live and work. Through this program, Team4Tech connected Guidewire staff with Ek Tara, an NGO aligned with the program’s key focus areas—supporting education in technology for underserved communities and supporting those in need due to violence, natural disasters, and lack of daily living resources.
Team4Tech facilitated eight weeks of virtual collaboration between Ek Tara staff and ten Guidewire volunteers from four different countries. The assembled volunteer team then joined Team4Tech and Ek Tara staff for two weeks in-person in India, collaborating across job functions and geographies to implement technology solutions that help Ek Tara accelerate their impact by becoming a more data-driven organization and creating better learning outcomes for students.
It changed my whole mindset about my experience working for my company. Guidewire has some incredible employees working there and to really get to know one another and learn from one another was a huge benefit. We brought our skills together to benefit Ek Tara, but I learned so much overall from my team members and we also discovered how our jobs tie in with one another.”
Jeffrey Moran, Guidewire Volunteer
The volunteer team tackled two streams of work for this project:
- Monitoring & Evaluation (M&E)
- One team of skilled volunteers supported Ek Tara with the implementation of an M&E framework and platform.
- The volunteers conducted research to determine the best technical solution and selected the platform Goonjan.
- While on-site, the volunteers met with a Goonjan representative and Ek Tara signed a contract to implement the solution. The team also delivered relevant training to assist Ek Tara with change management and shifting towards becoming a more data-driven organization.
- Digital Literacy
- A second team of skilled volunteers supported Ek Tara with selecting a learning management system (LMS) that will help organize lesson plans, curriculum materials, coding resources, and other digital tools for teachers and staff.
- Volunteers researched LMS platforms to house the content and relevant trainings and decided on Google Classroom.
- While on-site, the volunteers delivered in-person training to more than ten teachers, assisting them with getting their Google Classrooms set up. They also provided supporting user guides to assist with long-term sustainability.
During their time at Ek Tara, volunteers also led a career counseling session with more than 20 students. They shared their personal and professional journeys, providing advice for the girls on how to pursue their own academic and career dreams.
What I loved the most was the meeting with the students for the counseling session…. Building the session with our LMS and EkTara team from scratch, doing brainstorming, structuring the session, all ideas coming up together and the collaboration of all the team, the final delivery, gave me a real perception that we could bring hope for those girls. Their scared faces at the beginning of the session to the bright light on their eyes is something that got sealed deep into my heart!”
Natalia Costa, Guidewire Volunteer
Connecting Skilled Volunteers with NGO Staff for Co-Design
This was our first on-site project with Guidewire Software. To hear more about the volunteer team’s experience and watch a video to see volunteers in action, check out the Guidewire Blog here.
This engagement marks our fourth skills-based volunteering project with Ek Tara. Ek Tara staff have also leveraged trainings and resources in Team4Tech’s Community of Practice to deepen digital literacy skills and learn from other NGOs in their region. Team4Tech is proud to help Ek Tara advance their organizational goals around data management and digital literacy.
The Guidewire subteams were very aligned with our needs and were able to get right to the bottom of our requirements. Ek Tara is now taking a new step towards achieving data-driven decision-making in all segments. All the beneficiaries will benefit from the digital literacy program by learning various tools and making use of the LMS system we are working on creating.”
Rohan Bhattacharya, Ek Tara ICT Manager
More broadly, Team4Tech is proud to facilitate connections between volunteers and education-focused NGOs like Ek Tara, improving education that ultimately prepares learners for better jobs.
This is just one example of Team4Tech’s global contributions to education. Our organization continues to accelerate the impact of nonprofit organizations globally.