Introduction to My Sensorium: ASHRAYA has been running My Sensorium comprising of complementary-skill based experiential programs in rural higher primary schools in Karnataka, India since 2008, with a current footprint of 10 full-fledged programs at 9 higher primary schools. We have shown great success in the execution of these programs and in imparting valuable life skills to students that will differentiate them in their years ahead. We have expanded, stabilized and refined program content, systems and processes and earned the trust of the people we work with (block education officers, school teachers and admin staff, students and their parents as well as the community at large) to a point where the “Arivina Aramane” name (the Kannada title we have given to our initiative) has become well known in the project area we operate in. ASHRAYA started My Sensorium in 2008 when we, the founders were stationed in India on a personal work assignment. Our goal was to take up a large scale initiative covering a single area in which ASHRAYA could be the prime executor as opposed to being a funding agency for other NGOs. We intended to take up an area (educational focus and geographical location) that was scalable, repeatable and would have a high impact on a large number of beneficiaries. We selected Hanur Taluk in Karnataka since it is primarily local (140 Kms from Bangalore) with very few NGOs active in the area. In Dec 2008, we embarked on My Sensorium in partnership with the BEO (Block Education Officer) of Hanur Taluk. By the end of 2019-20, we have completed six key expansion phases of this initiative in Hanur Taluk and brought this initiative to a stable and repeatable state. We have focused 100% of our funding and activities on this initiative and have stopped funding other projects (of 3rd party agencies) since 2008.
My Sensorium is comprised of two key sister initiatives:
Seed Sensorium in the original project area where we started our program in 2008 in which we develop all the original content for our programs, learn and stabilize our program processes and operations leveraging our core team of 16 full-time members. We plan to continue to run Seed Sensorium over the coming years as a test bed for all our programs in to be launched at scaled through Cafe Sensorium.
Cafe Sensorium, our latest initiative in which we plan to scale My Sensorium to multiple project areas first within Karnataka and then across all of India, using an online learning platform through which executors of our program in these areas will learn within minimal supervision on an ongoing basis. We are piloting Cafe Sensorium in the year 2020-21 in T.Narsipur talk in rural Karnataka to prove that our hands-off approach to experiential learning. We are naming this initiative “Café Sensorium” along the lines of “Café Coffee Day” since it represents a franchisee decentralized but scalable operating model.
Please clicks on the links below to learn more about out two sister initiatives.