Santosh Phad's ThinkSharp Foundation is taking smart devices equipped with free books and learning material to villages, so that underprivileged children are not left out during the pandemic
Santosh Phad, Founder, ThinkSharp FoundationFor far too long, education for children in rural India has been set aside; for far too long, it has been brushed away as an after-thought. The start of the COVID-19 pandemic only made this situation worse. Sickness, paranoia and loss seemed to characterise everyday news, but one of the worst consequences of the lockdown was that all schools shut down. And there emerged a white-hot line between the privileged and the underprivileged. While those of us with the means to do so effortlessly switched to online learning with the support of our schools, the children of rural India were not so lucky. They could not afford devices, and even if some did, there were limitations to what they could do with those devices. That’s when ThinkSharp Foundation stepped into the lives of thousands of children around India, offering them a chance to learn from the comfort of their own homes amid a pandemic.