13.

Case studies
i. The story of Priyanka and Jennifer:
Priyanka is a bright student studying in Grade 10th. She lives with a parents, her mother
is a housewife and father being an auto driver. Being from an economically backward class
and a conservative society, Priyanka was very shy in nature. She needed help with the board
exams that were coming in soon.
Jennifer was also studying in Grade 10th. Facing problems of a drunkard father; she,
her sister and mother lived separately. Her mother would work all day outside putting the
responsibility to do the house work on her. Inspite of all these burdens, Jennifer was
determined to learn. She faced problems with ‘Mathematics’ especially and found it very
tough.
When Pallavi, the volunteer from U&I, heard about their stories, she decided to help
them and take up the responsibility to teach them personally. Pallavi is a BSc student and
has been relatively new to teaching and to U&I. With her interesting teaching techniques
and turning study into fun, she was able to effectively teach both of them. Through the
medium of ‘Concept Checks’ she was bale to effectively assess the understanding of the
students and modify her teaching methods accordingly.
Pallavi scored 60% and Jennifer with 72% marks in their boards. Both the girls and
their families were extremely happy and satisfied. Pallavi was proud of both the girls and
told them “To chase their dreams”. Pallavi wants to become a Bank Manager while Jennifer
wants to works in Human Resources.
“These girls have been an inspiration for me and I have learnt a lot through the
process. I wish both these girls good luck for their future”
-Pallavi

Pallavi with Priyanka Pallavi with Jennifer

 ii. A new beginning for Adham:
Annal home of orphans one fine day had 2 orphans walking in. Adham and his
one year old brother Gigikal. Being a baby, special care needed to be taken for Gigikal
both by the staff as well as Adham. Adham had no background of education. By the
time, Gigikal was big enough and ready for school, Adham was already 11. Adham was
very much thrilled to send his younger brother everyday at school. He never felt that he
was missing out on something.
U&I started teaching at Annal home around the same time. They were very
invested in the story and wanted Adham to take education too. It was a totally new
experience for him to watch the classrooms. He started observing all the classes from a
distance. He enjoyed the activities and the learnings and slowly became more
comfortable to come closer. For the first time in his life he wanted t go to school.
Now that the motivation was in place, rest everything followed smoothly. He
was registered in a special school nearby and was taken under the shelter of U&I Teach.
He now understands the importance of Education. He quotes:
“ENAKUM PADIKANUM NU AASAIYA IRINDIDI AANA ENNA
YARUM SETHUKALA. IPO NAAN PADIKA PORAN. U&I KU THANKS!”
(Even I want to be able to study. But nobody helped. Now I’m finally
going to study. Thanks to U&I!)

19. The team that helped us

We would like to acknowledge and thank all the help we have received from U&I. We
were in constant contact with Ms. Haritha Thirumoorthy who was the manager in charge of the
U&I Bangalore Teach branch. All the staff on floor, along with the volunteers and the students
have solved most of queries. We also had a chance to interact with Mr. Ajit Sivaram, who is
one of the co-founders of the organization. We took a 75-minute interview getting all our
doubts cleared and interacting about the scaling issues of the organization. With the help of
some of the knowledge gained in MBA, we were able to come up with recommendations; but
it is rightfully said that “Its much harder to do it in practice”.
We would also like to thank Mr. Sumant for sharing information on the U&I Care home
in Bangalore. Though there were security issues for us to visit the place, he has helped us
explain and understand the system through a set of telephonic interviews and mails.

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8. Organizational Structure
Since its inception, U&I has been into teaching field for underprivileged kids. Many
NGOs are working are in the same field and U&I has recognized that their core strength lies
‘Volunteer management’ rather than teaching or reach. The organization structure reflects
the same, wherein the level of hierarchy is high but at the same time the openness makes it
more like a Flat structure.

Hierarchical structure for U&I Teach

We can see that the structure is quite vertical, and it is necessary to maintain the
discipline and control especially in such a widespread and rapidly growing organization. It’s a
bit amusing that the organization even being its Entrepreneurial stage, also follows a
hierarchical structure. The U&I Care program is only operational in Bangalore and does not
follow such high level of hierarchy.

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 The organizational is focussed on building leaders who have their own motivation for
working. People with high enthusiasm is this field are identified and trained from the level 4
of Chapter leaders. They are assigned with Chapter mentors who are generally people
experienced in the same people, or people higher in the organization. With experience and
quality of work are promoted to stages 5 and 6 as Teach managers and Program managers
respectively. The 2 co-founders are currently the Program Directors and are looking for young
talent to take over and to make the organization self-sustaining. All these leaders are not paid
and work solely with their motivation towards the cause.
The paid staff start from level 5, who are in control of day-to-day activities. They are
responsible for implementing all the high-level strategies set up by the management. They
can be viewed as the HODs in the structure. They usually devote 10 hours/ week for this job.
Under them are the Class Heads for each class and then at the lowest level are the network
of Volunteers.
Thus, we can see that the structure is roughly divided into 2 parts for 2 different
purposes. Level 1-4 of the volunteers who actually work on ground and implement the plan;
while level 5-8 for developing leaders.

14 (& 18) Observations and Insights from the visit

We visited U&I Teach Bangalore centre and spent half a day there understanding the
day-to-working. Our visit started with attending a small training program for the volunteers.
We observed that there were 5 volunteers for that batch who would regularly come 1 hour
earlier before the kids came in. Upfront instructions are given to them by the U&I staff
regularly on the methods and ways to teach the kids effectively. From the interaction we
derived that the community was inclusive and supportive to get along all the students. They
make sure that everybody understands and follow systems like ‘Checks for Understanding’
during the class. We saw that the classrooms had high-class facilities like a white-board,
projector or even speakers. Innovative ways like class+ video are being followed to capture
attention of students. A low student-mentor ratio (approximately 4:1) is being maintained.
Apart from curriculum, students are also taught life lessons and values. In all, the class was
very ‘Student centric’ and inclusive for growth and learning.

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 After this, we met with the cofounder Mr. Ajit Sivaram and discussed about the
history, the present impact and the future growth trajectory. As discussed earlier, U&I Teach
understood that their core strength lies in ‘Volunteer Management’ and they see their future
as a community of leaders working solely through their motivation for the cause. Ajit became
very emotional while he was recollecting all the memories, and that U&I lies in his heart and
he feels very much connected to the society through this. The same motivation was observed
in all levels to staff we had an interaction with- may it be volunteers or the managers. Lastly,
Ajit shared with us his major concern on Attrition rate of the volunteers, of which we have
given some recommendation (covered in part 16).
Lastly, we got to see all the teaching happening in the centre one-on-one and we
closely observed all the students. The students seemed very happy and excited, unlike the
environment in a school. Books, boards, drawings, videos, etc and many more techniques
were used by the volunteers to teach and this particularly caught our eye. The students
seemed to have a personal bond with their teachers and were open to expressing themselves.
The small ratio of student-volunteer numbers enabled the personalized and customized
attention. In all the class seemed very lively and open.

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