3/29/16 (Tuesday, March 29, 2016) 7:30 AM:

The next morning we started bright and early and we went straight to see the Project Udaan at Zilla Parishad School in Waghpur Lasina. This project is enabling 100 village schools in Maharashtra’s drought and poverty struck region, with Android Tablet and App that teaches the concepts such as Gravity, Mathematics, Geography, Civic Sciences and much more in native language (Marathi). When we entered the school, we were welcomed in the school with great respect and honor. In fact, my family and I were given flowers and sweets when we entered the school, which shows the values and manners these children learn even in a school where most children do not even have food or water on their table at home. We also had a small religious ceremony (a pooja) with the Goddess Saraswati (the Goddess of Knowledge).

Two groups of kids performed two dances for us. The first group of kids was very young (around 5 years old) and they performed on various Bollywood songs. The second dance was a group of girls that performed a typical Marathi dance. All the girls were draped up in beautiful Marathi saris to get in character of the famous song “Pinga” from the Bollywood movie Bajirao Mastani. Then, we interviewed a few students, and we learned about how the helped enhance their learning experience. We learned that the tablet helped them learn many subjects such as Science, English, and Social Science through a fun and interactive way. It also exposed them to 21st century technology, something that is not readily available to them everyday.