Happy Horizons Trust is a registered non-profit organization founded with the vision to improve the quality of education in schools across India and bridge the gap between students, teachers and parents. It has been in operations since early 2012. OUR VISION One day all schools will offer quality education that focuses on the overall development of the child. OUR MISSION To create a systemic impact through local change-makers working closely with all stakeholders to strengthen the primary school education. OUR WORK AREA Currently, we work in Bihar, located in Eastern India. The Kosi region of Bihar is flood-prone every year. Once a hotbed for Polio in India, it’s a place for other health challenges like malnutrition and high infant mortality. It has amongst the lowest literacy rates and is home to extremely backward class communities, where early child marriage is a normal thing and women become grandmothers by 40. PROBLEM WE ARE TRYING TO SOLVE While we have around 98% enrolment in primary schools, a lack of motivation and interest is a major factor in a low quality of education. This problem gets compounded over the years of education, and the presence of under skilled and unqualified teachers makes matters worse. Our areas of focus is to use alternative learning tools and methods as an intervention to the existing school system to improve the quality of education by providing holistic education to the kids. We use methods based in participatory learning, storytelling, learning by doing, critical reasoning, community engagement, peer learning, videos and technology, reading and writing activities. The short-term change is therefore to enhance student motivations and long-term is to ensure that the children have a sustained interest for a long period of time. OUR OUTREACH So far, we have empowered 16 female youths in the Kosi region and have an outreach of more than 30,000 students across 6 different districts of Bihar.