Business Wire India
With COVID-19 digitizing schools and colleges all over the world, the education sector has taken an inevitable hit. In an effort to help students tackle the financial aspect of the difficulties of COVID-19, a few corporations have partaken in remarkable CSR initiatives. iSchoolConnect - a US and India-based AI-powered company that helps students study abroad - launched an annual scholarship worth $10,000 to help students get quality education overseas.

Another example of an organization with a marvelous initiative is Byju’s. The company, noticing a lack of technological equipment for education, launched a CSR initiative as a part of ‘Education for All’ to encourage digital learning. Their campaign, which is a people-driven movement, urges citizens to donate their smartphones, which would be refurbished and powered with Byju’s content before being distributed to children with no access to education. The plan is to reach as many children as possible, specifically in remote areas of the country, by the end of 2025. The initiative will also help recycle old smartphones responsibly.

iSchoolConnect‘s initiative, on the other hand, focused more on the lack of finance affecting students’ education options. Wanting to offer financial education to the most-deserving, the company launched a $10,000 scholarship, known as the iSchoolConnect Scholarship, for eligible students who wish to do their bachelor’s or master’s degree abroad. Apart from the scholarship amount, the perks include one-way flight tickets to a student’s desired study abroad destination and guided consultancy from the iSchoolConnect experts.

The initiative will help a student go to the United States, Canada, the UK, Germany, Ireland, Australia, Switzerland, New Zealand, Singapore, or the Netherlands. For this, the student would have to fill and submit an application form for the same. After which, deserving candidates will be aided in pursuing their education abroad in 2021. The company plans to go on increasing the scholarship amount and keep on adding more perks year by year.

Another startup, Codleo, which was founded in 2019, chose to help women and youth acquire employment opportunities in the new age IT sector. They launched an initiative for skilling the women and youth of today in Information Technology and coding skills. The company has designed courses and partnered with leading Information Technology companies for placement opportunities, which would drive students to finish the course. Additionally, the startup has collaborated with higher education institutions to help students learn about the latest trends in technology, giving them a better understanding of the IT job market. Codleo’s initiative would help reduce the number of unemployed Information Technology graduates.

In a similar spirit, several CSR initiatives have been taken up by NGO’s, universities, schools, and large corporations all over the country, including Lego, Microsoft, Miracle Foundation, Disney, Tata Steel, Starbucks, D.Y. Patil University, ICICI, Amazon, TCS, Intel, and IITs & NITs. Additionally, quite a few government organizations like UNESCO, PWD, and USAID have also done their bit.

While most of these organizations’ efforts have been directed at aiding youth in developing necessary skills, helping save the environment, and empowering women, only a few have been focusing on digital and international education.

One can only hope that the next year will bring better tidings for the education sector and allow students to pursue their dreams. In the meanwhile, iSchoolConnect will continue to grant its scholarship, awarding considerable amounts and better perks to deserving students every next year, Byju’s will pursue its efforts to digitize education, and Codleo will try to help students look for job opportunities in Fortune 100 companies.
About iSchoolConnect Inc.

iSchoolConnect is a Google Cloud partnered AI-product company that assists students across the globe in fulfilling their study abroad aspirations. Their platform, which uses AI to answer all study abroad related queries, recommend universities, help write essays, and prepare for the visa interview, is making unprecedented breakthroughs in higher education.