STORIES OF CHANGE:
ROJALIN SAHOO
Education is a powerful tool and when you are determined to change your life, the possibilities are endless. Here is a story of the indomitable change that Transform Learning brought for a young girl in Odisha.
Rojalin Sahoo is a student from Jadupur village part of Khordha district in Odisha, a state in the eastern belt of India. She belongs to a family with two sisters in classes 1 and 5, a mother who’s a housewife and her father who runs a small photo studio in Jadupur village. Her father supports the family of five from the meagre earnings of roughly Rs. 8000 (80£) a month.
The Transform team followed the journey of Rojalin who in 2019, participated in the Transform Learning programme, Utkarsh as it is known in Odisha, and has now moved to Class 12. She shared her experience of learning through the programme and how it has impacted her life since then.
Learning through Utkarsh
When Rojalin entered Class 9, she was shy, reserved, found it difficult to participate in her classes and was struggling with her studies. Utkarsh is designed to accelerate learning and for Rojalin, it supplemented her day-to-day school curriculum and helped her to understand the higher order concepts of Class 9.
Rojalin recalls how her English classes made her confident and enabled her to better grasp the concepts in other subjects as well. Despite the difficulties that she initially faced, her deep commitment to education and her determination to succeed led her to score 82% in her Class 10 exams. She ascribes her success to the Utkarsh programme which has allowed her to move to higher education and access different career opportunities.
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0.6-0.7 years of additional learning in under 50 hours of instructions for each subject
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Performance improved for students across all terciles
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Use of best global pedagogies - broad based gains are fairly uncommon for programmes at scale
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A cost effective programme at £9.51/studen
Impact of Utkarsh- J-PAL 2020
In 2020, Rojalin and her family met an international group of visitors from Leaders’
Quest where she interacted with our Trustee, Rebecca Eastmond. Rojalin excitedly conversed with her in English and it is a day that she fondly remembers.
Now in Class 12, Rojalin commutes one and a half hours daily to reach her school which is 15 km away. She has taken up Humanities and is pursuing Economics and Political Science. Mathematics is one of her favourite subjects and she loves working with numbers and graphs. She looks forward to preparing and scoring well in her Class 12 exams as well.
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Looking at Life Beyond
Determined to make a better life for herself and her family, Rojalin wants to take up Economics in college and become a lecturer as she is passionate about teaching as a profession.
Rojalin's story is a testament to the impact that education can have on a person's life. Her journey serves as an inspiration to other young girls who face similar challenges and demonstrates that quality education can break the cycle of poverty and truly transform lives. As she waves goodbye to us on the way to her bus home she exclaims,
“It would have been easier, if a learning enhancement programme similar to Utkarsh was available for Class 12!”