As part of our Covid-19 response in Tamil Nadu, STiR Education is delighted to announce an expansion to seven new districts in the state. We’re looking forward to working with teachers and education officials in Ariyalur, Krishnagiri, Nagapatinam, Perambalur, Salem, Thiruvarur and Thiruvanamalai, in addition to our existing projects. This means that we will now be working with a total of 13 districts in the state, and 29 across India. This expansion has been confirmed in a letter from the State Project Director at the Samagra Shiksha, our government partner in Tamil Nadu.
On 25 August, we welcomed the Chief Education Officers to an inter-district CEO forum, bringing together representatives from all 13 districts to introduce them to our Covid-19 response. We were also joined by district coordinators, as well as representatives from the state government and the Education Alliance. CEOs from our existing districts spoke about their experiences of working with us over the past year, and the meeting filled us with excitement for the coming months.
Samuel Gnanadurai, our Senior Programme Manager for Tamil Nadu, said: “We’re really pleased to be working in these additional districts for the next few months as part of our Covid-19 response. We’ll be sharing content with teachers and officials through our online learning platform to continue to develop their professional capacity during this time, and look forward to meeting them in person for the first time whenever this is possible! We’re especially grateful to the Samagra Shiksha for supporting this expansion as part of a shared commitment to the sustainability of our work, and the ownership of project activities by government officials.”
Mr Munusamy, CEO of Villupuram district, said: “STiR Education has rightly identified the most important need of the hour: to reignite the intrinsic motivation of primary school teachers.”
Ms. Geetha, CEO of Dharmapuri district, said: “I started this post just before lockdown and heard about the network meetings and went to observe and get feedback from the teachers. They have found it useful in improving the classroom atmosphere.”
