Asha Trust - Project Deepam

Project Brief: The aim of Project Deepam is to establish a well-equipped computer lab for children from classes 6 – 10 in Besant Theosophical Higher Secondary School.
Project Type: Special Needs (description)
Primary Focus: other (description)

Secondary Focus: other

Area: Urban
Supporting Chapter Contact: Chennai
Status: completed - sustainable
Project Steward: Vijaya Sundaram
Project Partner(s): Vijaya Sundaram
Other Contacts:
Project Address: , -,-,-,
TAMIL NADU  600003
Tel: 011919876543210
Stewarding Chapter: Chennai
Oct 2016ChennaiUSD 4170
Oct 2015ChennaiUSD 9357

Total = $13527

The aim of Project Deepam is to establish a well-equipped computer lab for children from classes 6 – 10 in Besant Theosophical Higher Secondary School.

Besant Theosophical Higher Secondary School is a government aided school run by Kalakshetra Foundation. The school does not charge any fees from the students. While the corporation schools have been supplied with laptops and computers, the aided schools do not have access to technology aided learning. Many children from the BTHSS are from underprivileged background and do not have access to computers either at home or in school. This day and age computer education and using computers as teaching aid has become order of the day. Computers have become indispensable and children become adept in technology if given early exposure.

With that in mind Asha Chennai volunteers would like to extend our services by setting up a computer lab for children in the school. BTHSS has about 380 children in classes 6 – 10 in both English and tamil mediums. While children from 11-12 standards who opt for computer science have access to computers, rest of the children show keen interest in learning. Our meeting with the HM and teachers prove that they are very keen to support this initiative.
The objective is to set up a lab and hire teacher, lab assistant and run the centre as Asha Chennai project. The Audiovisual room that has been identified for this project has proper ventilation, lighting that is needed. Our goal is to set up and run the lab for two – three years after which the teachers and BTHSS would be fully trained to run the lab. Computers in a classroom can be effectively used for a variety of purposes.

We intend to use them for the following purposes in English, maths and subjects,

  • Teach children the basics of how to use computers.

  • Delivering lesson plans to the teachers to instruct them how to teach a specific lesson, in particular

  • Guide for pronunciation, meaning, grammar etc. for English lessons.

  • Augmenting that with contents like Videos to aid them in understanding how to teach the lesson or in conducting activities related to that lesson.

  • Contents that can be viewed by the whole class to learn a lesson (like ECTAL) or a related topic better.

  • Provide materials for the teachers that would be useful while teaching the class incl.,


    • Worksheets.

    • Materials to be used during activities incl. offline games.

    • Assessments.


  • Allow teacher to enter marks from assessments so that good analytics can be done on the same.

Asha Chennai will set up the lab with 10 computers, projector, printer, educational materials etc. All the hardware and software for the initial setup would be provided by us but we look forward to support from the school in electricity supply, desks, benches, storage cabinets, plug sockets etc. There is enough room for setting up a library as well so the children can read in the event of power failure etc. We need to ensure that there is proper security around the premises to prevent theft.