Here in the United Kingdom, and globally, almost everyone is reeling from the highly disruptive and adverse impact of the COVID-19 crisis.

It goes beyond saying that the COVID-19 pandemic has been hard on all of us. We all have had to adjust to a "new normal" of living and learning and for a few lucky students, the abrupt transition from in school learning to an online/distance learning model has been relatively seamless.

However, this is not the case for millions of children in India, where the disruption in many impoverished communities is far more significant. The global impact of COVID-19 has had a considerable impact on Indian school children, resulting in the near-universal closing of schools at all levels with no online access to classes or lessons. With more than 300 million learners in India out of school due to the lockdown, Pratham's work to ensure continuity of education becomes more important than ever before. Many of these children are first-generation students from impoverished households, which makes them particularly vulnerable to interruptions in their learning. If the current situation continues, inequality will increase, and social mobility will decrease.

The PraDigi initiative works to transform learning through the use of technology. Using continuous data analysis to determine what content is relevant and engaging, the goal is to develop a viable student-focused model which can accompany more traditional teacher-centric approaches to scale the methodologies across India's rural school system. To date, the program has distributed 18,500 tablets uploaded with approved educational content and is bridging the gap for those communities that have limited access to quality education.

Any contribution you make through our campaign will enable the PraDigi Initiative to provide educational content and virtual outreach for those children in this time of desperate need. In collaboration with Rasberry Pi, we hope to be able to purchase over 150 mini computers/tablets which can continue to educate over 1000 kids in rural India.

In these turbulent times, it is imperative that we not lose sight of the importance of education and its role in lifting generations out of poverty. We thank you in joining our effort to help us raise funds for the PraDigi Initiative and keep school children in India engaged in their education.