Masoom is a not for profit organization that works with the night school students to work on the academics and provide better career opportunities to them. Masoom began with informal research on the educational problem of night schools culminated in a action program in 2008. Masoom is the first organization in Maharashtra to run a comprehensive “School Transformation Programme” for night school education. Masoom started with 2 night schools in the first year and then gradually increased its spread to 47 schools and 3500 students in the year 2015. Masoom plans to reach out to 210 night schools by 2020 impacting 20,000 night school students in Maharashtra.

The ‘Night School Transformation Program’ is specifically tailored to meet the needs of the night school and the individual students who are mainly school dropouts from poor socio-economic background, most of them working during the day and supporting their families. The project follows a Three-pronged Model to achieve its aim:

1. Educational infrastructure building and support: This component includes providing textbooks, notebooks, workbooks, science mobile laboratory, math-kits, extra-tuition classes and special moderator sessions for students appearing for SSC examination, and nutritional support etc.

2. Capacity Building support: This component has training workshops for teachers and students, personalized counseling, English conversation classes, field visits, home visits, vocational guidance .

3. Advocacy: Advocacy is a very important component of the program. Masoom will try to get the government to take more responsibility of the night schools.

Through various project interventions the project is expected to enhance the teaching and learning environment in night schools, build leadership quality and employability skills among students and facilitate stakeholder participation, ownership of the program and local partnership for improved school based management and sustenance of the Program.

Masoom has developed a grading tool to regularly assess schools on the basis of different parameters. These parameters categories schools in 5 – Lower D, D, C, B, A. Lower D is the school which need a improvements in all areas and “A” grade is for the ideal school. Masoom targets to upgrade all schools into “A” grade.

We are happy to share that Masoom’s third party evaluation has been done by Samhita.

Career Cell: Masoom has set up a career cell in 2011-12 in order to provide vocational education & employment opportunities to night school students. Following activities are run under the career cell program:

1. Computer Course: Masoom has set up its own Computer Center at Parel. The objective is to impart computer education to the night school students at reasonable fees. We have tied up with NIIT Foundation and Intel for certification. In this course we teach Microsoft Office, Internet and Email.

2. English Conversation: Currently we conduct a spoken English course for students. Students will be able to understand the English language and will be able to communicate in English after completing the course. The duration of the course is 2 Months, and it occurs twice a week.

3. Scholarship: Scholarship is provided by Masoom to SSC pass out students from our night schools. We provide Higher Education Scholarships to the top 2 girl students from each school. Under this scholarship, fees for Higher education and educational material expenses are reimbursed to the students. We also provide Vocational scholarship to needy students.

4. Vocational Training and Placement: We have tied up with Skills Academy Pvt. Ltd. (supported by National Skill Development Council) for vocational course training and placement. We have given in Store Promoter course to students in Retail sector. Now we are providing training in sales for HDFC Bank and Shopper stop. After the training Skills Academy will provide them JOB in HDFC Bank and Shopper Stop.

5. Interest Mapping and Career Guidance (for SSC students): In this program we map the Interest of students through aptitude test. We also provide Report Card to students and guide them to identify the area in which they can do better. This also helps to identify the vocational training courses which students can opt for better career opportunities.

6. Personal Counseling and Life Skills: Students are being given Personal counseling on individual basis and group sessions are arranged to get them cope with issues of youth and help them get Career focus.