For the last 4 years, we’ve been working in Bihar to increase access to pre & post matric scholarships offered by the central minority affairs ministry. We offer on-call support to students & institutes in navigating various steps of the scheme application & verification processes.
Last year, we were able to support 500+ institutes across Bihar. Our approach was:
- scrape data from various public dashboards (NSP, U-DISE, NGO Darpan, etc.)
- cross-reference to identify education institutes likely in need of handholding
- connect with these institutes / nonprofits near them and offer on-call support
Systemic gaps, however, need systemic solutions. At least 27000 out of Bihar’s ~95000 institutes need support, and we can only realize that by supporting district & state-level officers. To that end, we are currently studying gaps at district-level officers with the support of Genpact Better World Initiative. We are also trying to build our internal capacity in analyzing budgets, understanding scheme planning, funding & delivery cycles and evaluating scheme efficacy.
I attended a user survey for openbudgets portal earlier this year, kept coming back and it was amazing to see the information and the explainers kept increasing every time!
I think we have a lot to learn from this community, and we would like to contribute what we can. : )
If any of that sounds interesting, please reach out! I’m at [email protected] and 9599 681 997.
PS: there was a restriction of 2 links per post. Adding some links in the comment.