Latest news with #LLF
Hans India
21-07-2025
- Business
- Hans India
EY GDS launches Green Skills Centres of Excellence to equip students with sustainability and future-tech skills
Bengaluru : EY Global Delivery Services (EY GDS), in collaboration with the Learning Links Foundation (LLF), has launched its first Green Skills Centre of Excellence (CoE) at a government high school in Bengaluru. A second CoE is set to open in New Delhi in the coming months. These centres aim to equip over 1,200 students from underserved communities with practical knowledge and skills in sustainability and emerging technologies. The Green Skills CoE in Bangalore was inaugurated by Rajasekar Rajagopal, Assurance and Climate Change and Sustainability Services (CCaSS) leader, EY GDS, and was attended by Rumi Mallick Mitra, Director, Corporate Responsibility, EY GDS, Nuriya Ansari, President, Learning Links Foundation, and Sudha Priyadarshan, Senior Vice President, LLF. Designed for students between Grades 6 to 12, the Green Skills centres offer hands-on, project-based learning in areas such as climate change, biodiversity, waste management, renewable energy, and digital innovations like AI and analytics. It will help students develop both digital fluency and environmental consciousness, which are key traits for India's future workforce. The Green Skills CoE includes a dedicated lab setup powered by green technology. The curriculum will enable sustainability learning aligned with UN Sustainable Development Goals, especially SDG 12 (Responsible Consumption) and SDG 13 (Climate Action), helping students understand real-world environmental challenges. Hosted within government high schools to maximize accessibility and inclusion, the project includes professional development of teachers in sustainability-led pedagogy and the use of AI in sustainability.
India.com
16-07-2025
- General
- India.com
How A Bureaucrat's Childhood Memory Led To A Literacy Revolution Touching Over 16 Million Children
New Delhi: It started with a question that stayed long after the files were signed, the speeches were made and the transfers were ordered. Somewhere in the Bodo-dominated interiors of Assam in 1986, a young IAS officer named Dhir Jhingran noticed something that tugged harder than routine ever could – children sitting silently in classrooms and lost in a language they did not understand. He was then district magistrate in Kokrajhar, a region shaken by conflict and instability in Assam. There was no Right to Education law back then. But to Jhingran, the idea that a child could be in school and still not learn felt like a breach of something sacred. That quiet discomfort would travel with him for decades. It would later take the form of the Language and Learning Foundation (LLF) – a movement now reshaping India's literacy landscape. Since 2015, the LLF has reached over 14.2 lakh children directly and impacted more than 1.6 crore through materials designed to unlock learning in the languages they know best. A Classroom Comes Alive in Varanasi In the primary school of Koirajpur, Uttar Pradesh, teacher Smita Chaturvedi remembers the days when her blackboard felt more like a wall. Students showed up, nodded through definitions, recited textbook lines and left the classroom behind, both physically and emotionally. Things shifted when her school partnered with the LLF. She was given workbooks and guides that invited curiosity. Flashcards, cue-based games, storytelling techniques and posters – all in sync with how young minds play, feel and understand. Three years in, her classroom does not sound like a classroom. It sounds like a place where children belong. 'The stories are on the walls now. The kids do not wait to be told, they begin learning the moment they walk in,' she said. Sapna Spoke, The Class Listened In Haryana, a girl named Sapna sat quietly for weeks after enrolling. She was seven. Her mother tongue was a Punjabi dialect her teachers did not speak. She was not slow and shy. She did not understand what the adults around her were saying. Trained under LLF's multilingual approach, her teacher began teaching concepts in Sapna's home language – not permanently, just as a bridge. It gave her enough confidence to cross over. Today, Sapna is the child who raises her hand first. The Experiment That Started It All Kokrajhar was burning when Jhingran was first posted there. Ethnic tensions had turned violent. But amid the conflict, he discovered something unexpected – a dormant hunger for education. Parents wanted learning. Even inside refugee camps. The solution was not more policing. It was books. Volunteers. Hope. He helped launch an adult literacy campaign across the district. Over 3,000 local youth, mostly women, became teachers overnight. They taught adults to read, to write, to count and, somewhere in the process, to heal. Tribal songs echoed in makeshift classrooms. Community peace meetings replaced armed stand-offs. Within nine months, the district had turned a corner. The experiment worked. Literacy did not follow peace. It created it. Language as a Lifeline, Not a Luxury A large number of Indian children still start school in a language they do not speak at home. They listen. They copy. They pass. But they do not understand. And when comprehension breaks, confidence collapses. This mismatch often pushes children to drop out silently. LLF's work builds a bridge between home languages and school languages. Its programmes help children transition into reading and writing while preserving what they already know. Three Tools, One Mission LLF's model rests on three pillars: Teacher training – intensive workshops, online courses and regular support for educators. Government collaboration – formal partnerships with seven states, including Assam, Jharkhand, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh. Teaching materials – custom handbooks, daily lesson plans and bilingual workbooks that reach the child in her own voice. One Memory Stayed Jhingran spent years at the Ministry of Human Resource Development. He coordinated primary education programmes in eight states. He was advisor to the UNICEF, helped Nepal restructure its education policy and still chose to return to the grassroots. To start from scratch. In every workshop, every workbook and every smile of a child who finally understands a poem, the memory of Kokrajhar lives on. 'I remember those children. They sat in silence for so long. I do not want any child in this country to feel that silence again,' he says. And just like that, from a forgotten district in Assam, a revolution was born – not to make children study harder, but to make them feel heard.
The Wire
30-06-2025
- General
- The Wire
National Seminar on Strengthening Multilingual Education Spotlights the Future of Inclusive Learning in India
New Delhi [India], June 30: Language and Learning Foundation (LLF), a leading nonprofit working to strengthen foundational learning in India, recently marked a decade of impact in the education sector. Building on this milestone, LLF hosted the National Seminar on Strengthening Multilingual Education: Insights, Innovation, and the Way Forward at Bharat Mandapam, New Delhi. The seminar brought together education leaders, policymakers, practitioners, and development partners to explore how Multilingual Education (MLE) can drive inclusive and effective learning, particularly for children from diverse linguistic and socio-cultural backgrounds. The event underscored LLF's commitment to advancing systemic change in foundational literacy and numeracy through language-responsive teaching practices. The seminar opened with a compelling address by Dr. Dhir Jhingran, Founder and Executive Director of LLF. Reflecting on LLF's decade-long work in the foundational learning space, he said, 'The most important aspect of a multilingual approach is mindset about children's first languages or local languages. We must support development of a mindset that welcomes and respects children's home languages and supports their active use in classrooms. That is the bottom line - an attitude that recognises these languages not as inferior, but as valuable and worthy of inclusion in education.' Shri Sanjay Kumar, IAS, Secretary, Department of School Education & Literacy, Ministry of Education, delivered the keynote address. Emphasising the urgency of mainstreaming MLE, he stated, 'Language gives us identity. It's not just a means of communication—it shapes how we think, feel, and connect. If a child learns one language well, they can learn any language well. That's the strength of multilingualism that our education policy must embrace.' The Guest of Honour, Ms. Prachi Pandey, Joint Secretary (Institutions and Training), Ministry of Education, reinforced the significance of language equity 'India's linguistic diversity is a living symbol of our pluralism. When all languages are treated as equal in the classroom, we nurture not just stronger learning outcomes, but a more inclusive and cohesive society.' The seminar featured a Special Address by Dr. Saadhna Panday, Chief of Education, UNICEF India, who highlighted the need for system-level change 'With all the effort around multilingualism, we compromise quality if it is not well-resourced. Now we have the evidence of what works, we have great commitment from the government, and we've built the momentum with NIPUN 1.0. India has done fantastically with NEP, with NCF, with NIPUN Bharat—really emphasizing the child's home language as the medium of instruction. We need to align these fantastic policies with existing evidence and scale what works.' The Gallery Walk of the MLE Material Exhibition, inaugurated by the Chief Guest and Guest of Honour, offered a vibrant showcase of multilingual teaching-learning resources developed by state governments and education partners. A key highlight was the display of innovative materials created through LLF's ongoing collaborations with states such as Assam, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Odisha, and Rajasthan—demonstrating contextually rich, inclusive tools designed to support foundational learning in diverse linguistic settings. The technical sessions spotlighted powerful examples of Multilingual Education (MLE) in action, including the Neev – Multilingual Education Programme in Chhattisgarh and initiatives by NCERT and UNICEF. These sessions are transforming early grade classrooms into more inclusive and effective learning spaces. The seminar concluded with a collective reflection on the way forward, reaffirming a strong commitment to equity-led foundational learning. LLF's vision—'A Strong Foundation, Stronger Future'—was a recurring theme, with calls for stronger policy alignment and increased support from states to scale multilingual education across the country. About Language and Learning Foundation Language and Learning Foundation (LLF) is a system-focused and impact-driven organisation working at scale towards improving the Foundational Literacy and Numeracy (FLN) outcomes of children in government primary schools in India. Foundational skills such as reading with comprehension, writing independently, and doing simple subtraction are gateway skills that must be acquired and mastered for all future learning in schools. The World Bank has estimated more than half the children in India at late primary age cannot read and understand grade-appropriate short sentences, also defined as learning poverty. Similar findings have been reported by the National Achievement Survey (NAS) and the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER). At LLF, we believe that large-scale transformation in the teaching and learning process is required to address this crisis. With the focus on learning at the bottom of the pyramid, LLF works in educationally marginalized areas where children come from families with low literacy levels, deprived social groups, and where home languages are different from school languages. (Disclaimer: The above press release comes to you under an arrangement with PNN and PTI takes no editorial responsibility for the same.).
Spectator
18-06-2025
- Politics
- Spectator
The tangled bureaucracy of appointing an Archbishop
Cardinals elected the new Pope within a fortnight but it will take almost a year to choose our next Archbishop of Canterbury. The beloved Anglican interregnum is intended to 'take soundings'. These are unproductive if held in an echo chamber. The chairman of the Crown Nominations Commission for the successor to Justin Welby, Lord Evans of Weardale, is an efficient and discreet public servant. But most of the large group of voting members, including both its C of E bishops (York, Norwich), come from the fastest-declining part of the Church, its liberal wing. Thanks to Welby's reforms, the commission now has no fewer than five members from the wider Anglican communion, only one of whom is from the burgeoning, usually traditionalist African churches (total membership c. 43 million). The others include an engineer from Argentina (total membership c. 22,500), a Maori hemp farmer and a bishop from the ever-shrinking liberal Church in Wales. Then come six elected by the mainly liberal General Synod and three from the ultra-liberal Diocese of Canterbury. Read the last's 'statement of needs' about 'the Archbishop we are seeking', to feel whither the wind bloweth. It orders the next Archbishop to get on well with his or her suffragan, the Bishop of Dover, who shoulders most of the diocesan duties, expressly emphasising the importance of this particular one, the liberal Rose Hudson-Wilkin, a protegée of Archbishop Welby. You would think she had the right of veto over any candidate proposed. The statement also insists that the successful candidate 'has worked and will continue to work constructively with the Living and Loving in Faith Process' (LLF). This entirely liberal project, little known to the outside world, is the latest attempt to permit same-sex marriage in church. Opponents protest at the procedural sleight of hand which evades the rule that a change of doctrine can pass only with a two-thirds majority in all three houses of the synod. If pushed forward, LLF will split the Church at the February synod, with orthodox believers (the growing part of the Church) departing. LLF has been so beset by controversies that even its current chairman, the liberal Bishop of Leicester, Martin Snow, has recently resigned. It was beginning to dribble away. But if Canterbury's 'needs' prevail, it will jump back up again. Oh dear, things were so much fairer when a well-instructed prime minister – say, Harold Macmillan choosing Michael Ramsey – simply made the appointment himself. Without bureaucracy, the established Church sort of worked. With it, it sort of doesn't. Last Saturday, we went to London for a lovely party to celebrate the 90th birthday of my ever-vigorous uncle by marriage, John Oliver, ex-Bishop of Hereford. It was held in a club in Pall Mall. On our walk to and from Charing Cross, we saw the following things: 1) About 30 dog-carts, drawn by horses trotting and occasionally cantering past. They were unpoliced and unstewarded, and dashed along, scattering pedestrians as they turned the corner at the bottom of Haymarket. I loved watching, but they were dangerous. 2) On emerging from the club, several people in morning dress and cavalry officers in ceremonial uniform having come from Trooping the Colour. 3) Thirty seconds later, 100 or so naked people, mainly men, riding bicycles as fast as they could peddle, some carrying Pride flags. The intention, I think, was genial, but the overall impression was genital, and repulsive. The next day, at a party in the country, I met Robert Jenrick, the shadow justice secretary. He told me about his ongoing campaign to dramatise the degradation of the public realm under Labour and brandished a photo taken the day before of two men, naked except for their shoes, smoking weed in the park opposite Apsley House. I wonder if they were two resting bicyclists. I later discovered that we had witnessed an annual event called the World Naked Bike Ride, 'a protest against car culture and oil dependency'. I agree with Mr Jenrick that a growing constituency are utterly sick of exhibitionists of all kinds who hog the public space and create what mayors call a 'vibrant' city. If he could persuade the teams of police currently deployed to arrest solitary women praying outside abortion clinics to clear this mess up, he might one day become prime minister. Sir Geoff Palmer has died, professor of beer and first black professor of anything in Scotland. His obituaries repeated his story that when seeking a job in agricultural research at Nottingham University in 1964, he had been interviewed by Keith Joseph, cabinet minister and future mentor of Margaret Thatcher. In Sir Geoff's account, Joseph 'told me to go back where I came from and grow bananas'. When I first heard this story, I greatly doubted it [see Notes in September and October 2015]. Joseph, said Sir Geoff, was the Min of Ag representative on the interview panel. But Joseph was never an agriculture minister and knew nothing about agriculture. I was also assured by a former MAFF permanent secretary that it was against departmental rules for a minister to interview anyone for such a post. Besides, Joseph, whom I knew, was a scrupulously courteous anti-racist, the only member of Ted Heath's shadow cabinet to refuse to oppose Labour's Race Relations Act. Sir Geoff had got the wrong man. He hotly denied this, but never produced any evidence. Of course, I never doubted his claim that somebody said this unpleasant thing to him, but that person was not Keith Joseph. In further researches, I found a professor long associated with Kew Gardens with a very similar name. I wondered if this might explain the mix-up, but did not push the point in case this too would unfairly blame another. In fairness to Sir Keith's reputation, I think all Sir Geoff's obituaries should take the story down, as has Wikipedia.
Express Tribune
05-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Express Tribune
LLF showcases cultural brilliance in New York
The Lahore Literary Festival (LLF) made a mark in New York as it celebrated Pakistan's literary heritage, cultural identity, and intellectual contributions on a global stage. The event brought together writers, artists, academics, and cultural icons for an exchange of ideas. CEO of LLF Razi Ahmed, addressed the gathering, stating that LLF is committed to aligning with the evolving global intellectual landscape. Razi Ahmed underscored the importance of positioning Pakistani literature alongside global literary traditions to amplify the country's voice on the international stage. "Our land holds a literary legacy, sustained through initiatives like LLF," he noted. The New York edition of LLF featured a diverse lineup of sessions, including in-depth discussions on Pakistani history, heritage, language, and contemporary culture. A Punjabi poetry evening highlighted regional literary richness, while sessions explored how to preserve the past while navigating the future. The programme extended beyond literature to include book launches and discussions on art, music, politics, science, and philosophy. A youth poetry session and a qawwali performance by the Sami Brothers added a cultural flair to the event. The festival featured speakers and performers including Manan Ahmed, Iftikhar Dadi, Qudsia Rahim, Vasaka Dassi, Mumtaz Mustafa, Mishal Hussain, Nusrat Durrani, Ustad Nasiruddin Sami, Amina Tahir Khan, and Mashallah Saif.
