Bisma Bhat
Srinagar, March 21: A few days ago, Arusa Niyaz, a class 10 student received a call from her a friend informing about the offline digital content that she received from Kashmir Education Initiative (KEI), an NGO that works for quality education in Kashmir.
For the last few days, Arusa was very depressed that her studies may suffer this year also. Particularly after the educational institutions were shut, Arusa thought that it might be the end of her career.
“I was worried about my studies because education becomes the first casualty in Kashmir whenever any untoward things happen. My friend received study material from KIE and we are trying to share it with other fellows as well,” she said.
Kashmir Education Initiative is USA based non-profit, a non-political, non-religious organization that works for access to quality education for students in Kashmir.
“We have made the content available in pen drives which include recorded videos of lecturers, academic books, novels, worksheets and BYJU’S software. This content is available free to every student and they can make good use of it while sitting at home,” said one of the board members of KIE.
He said that they are planning to liaison with different schools so that in times of distress and crises, education of students are not affected.
“We have distributed 1000 pen drives amongst KEI students since December 2019. These 64GB USB drives were loaded with educational software programs like scratch, fiction and non-fiction books like Alchemist, video lecture from Khan Academy, Byju’s and J&K School board of education,” he said.
The KIE volunteer said they are also organizing community level schools also. “Since social gathering are banned due to the outbreak of COVID-19, NGO is contacting students on phones and short messaging services to guides them.
