By Nitin Rao

Founded in 2005 by five Harvard Business School students, the India School Fund is an innovative social startup designed to provide quality education and drive entrepreneurship in rural areas where people live on less than one dollar per day and four million children do not attend school. By creating talent markets around clusters of schools tied to the local economy, the ISF facilitates community-driven economic activity. The Fund’s teaching approach is fundamentally different from existing educational institutions, as it works to foster an entrepreneurial mindset and high levels of expectations early in a student’s development. The multi-grade classroom model enables students to develop the core skills required of successful entrepreneurs, employees or graduates from tertiary education, thereby pushing them up the development ladder.

The core disciplinary strengths developed in the classroom follow the three major categories of “technical,” “soft,” and “life” skills. Technical skills, taken from a decidedly vocational standpoint, evoke the concrete knowledge base necessary for effective entrepreneurship. Soft skills encompass the more abstract aspects to business education, namely communication and negotiation skills, as well as how to think critically, analytically, and creatively. Lastly, life skills include aptitude in a broader range of education, such as maintaining a healthy lifestyle, living resourcefully, and upholding responsible and informed financial literacy, pivotal to one’s success in the business world.

To provide a comprehensive solution to poverty alleviation, the ISF collaborates with organizations with a proven record of success in their respective fields of expertise. Institutions include: Rishi Valley, an international, award-winning Indian organization, for their unique approach to rural education, Teach for America, a globally-renowned education service, namely the implementation of their “Teach for India” model, designed to substantially increase teaching capacity in rural areas, ITC e-Choupal, a largely successful rural development initiative, specifically through involvement in business, education, and infrastructural improvement, for their plans to improve the productivity of farmers through placement of Internet kiosks as well as agricultural products and services, SKS, an acclaimed and highly influential Indian microfinance institution providing financial services, and finally, Harvard Business School, School of Education and Public Health, for a guarantee of continuous improvement in education, health and local economic development strategies.

The Challenge…

Education is a rare commodity in Rajugella, in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh. Literacy is a meager 30% percent among men and an even paltrier 10% among women. Economic development – let alone progressive innovation – is difficult when more than 50% of those who complete the fifth grade have difficulty solving simple mathematical problems. Generations of inaccessibility to quality education have created a consistent track toward poverty, one that Harvard Business School students hope to break, one village at a time. ISF’s unique business model engages youths, professionals, and experts from both the developed and developing world, empowering successive generations through a fundamentally different approach to education.

Education in Action

The India School Fund works through a system of “hub and spokes”: an integrated, “nodal cluster” of schools in outlying villages are connected to a centralized “resource hub.” Resources and expertise are concentrated in one location, then shared across a network of educational institutions. The marginal cost of educating additional children is kept minimal, as there is no required investment in infrastructure for satellite schools. Instead, ISF works closely with local communities, who, in turn, provide facilities, monitor teacher/student attendance, and cook nutritional meals on a daily basis. Once the Fund’s education center is operational, the program will be instituted among 15-20 satellite schools in surrounding villages within a ten-mile radius. This initial dissemination, ISF projects, will reach more than 1,200 children annually. Ensuring successful implementation in Rajugella is the first (large) step toward the India School Fund’s larger goal (and bigger picture) of strengthening and legitimizing the rural educational and economic systems in India.

To address and, through doing so, better understand root-causes of problems, the ISF initiative has devised a five-step approach to scaling sustainable social and economic changes. The first step is to provide relevant primary education and basic health care to community members under the Fund’s target audience canopy. Second, to expand the ISF program to surrounding villages and engage new (and larger) communities. Thirdly, to develop middle school and vocational training programs in the interest of elongating and diversifying educational opportunities available. Fourth, to provide community members access to financial and business opportunities. Lastly, to replicate and differentiate existing educational “clusters” in other rural areas of India.

Business Model

Through the India School Fund’s youth-to-youth business model, American graduate-students teach youths in India. Additionally, “ISF Chapters” are established in top business schools through South Asian associations. Annual visits to Indian villages ensure an emotional bond and a sense of responsibility towards development. A growing network of socially conscious students and professionals secures funding for the Fund through donations and fundraisers, which, in addition to supporting the initiative and its projects, provides valuable networking opportunities.

To better implement the program, ISF will measure and analyze its impact through three key indicators: household income, children’s health, and education level. Furthermore, each of these areas is based on unique curriculum objectives as well as the Minimum Level of Learning required by the local Board of Education to access higher education.

Financial Sustainability in the Long-Term

As the education sector continues to face the high hurdles of broken supply-chains and high transaction costs, implementation speeds and expansion of the ISF becomes increasingly hindered. This, of course, lags progress of fundraising critical to the India School Fund’s survival. However, as 100% of initial capital investments – a total of $40,000 USD - and a commendable 80% of the first year’s operating budget ($30,000 USD) have been secured, the ISF will create an endowment fund, accessing funding from multiple sources to ensure sustainability and expansion of the educational cluster to other regions. This plan, both realistic and highly attainable, will be carried out once the designated pilot program, centered in Rajugella, has been successfully implemented for the long-term in three years’ time.

Acting on Education

The India School Fund provides an ambitious, but pragmatic approach to widespread education in India. It’s unique model, drawing strength from powerful community and institutional networks, as well as business techniques with non-profit objectives, creates a gateway in earnest toward making a sustainable impact in the education sector in India. Through collaborative effort and effective implementation, the ISF initiative can help crack India’s education deficit, breaking a vicious cycle.