The GC-DWC receives support to aid students in India
Porticus, a global philanthropic organization dedicated to creating a just and sustainable future for all, will be supporting the University of Notre Dame’s Global Center for the Development of the Whole Child (GC-DWC) to empower and enhance the social mobility of historically marginalized students in India.
The GC-DWC will serve as the anchor organization in Project Sampoorna, a four-year project focused on improving the Telangana Social/Tribal Welfare Residential Education Institutions Society’s ability to help students through curricular and extracurricular activities in approximately 380 schools.
In the southern Indian state of Telangana, the society, a government office dedicated to improving educational outcomes for historically marginalized students through residential education, works to advance the social and educational equity of children by offering them more effective, high-quality and holistic learning and life skills opportunities. Developing a holistic education system that meets the complex needs of these learners requires careful assessment of how both existing and potential activities align within a whole-child development approach. As the anchor organization for Project Sampoorna, the GC-DWC will match the society’s vision with the tools and supports it needs to achieve its goals, refine its processes, and sustain them into the future.
“The society has made tremendous progress in recent years to implement holistic learning activities to advance the education of learners from marginalized backgrounds,” said Neil Boothby, the founding director of the GC-DWC. “This award comes at a crucial time for the Global Center to leverage this momentum and support the society in increasing the coherence and efficacy of these activities and ultimately promote lasting and sustainable change.”
The GC-DWC will support and advise key educators and members of the society, including teachers and principals, on how to develop and integrate a whole-child development framework into program activities. The GC-DWC also will strengthen the society’s capacity to adopt a whole-child development lens in programming by offering best-practice workshops as well as training on how to measure the efficacy and impact of their programs. The inclusive design of the research process strives to ensure the sustainability of project activities long after the project period.
“Neil and his team at the Global Center continue to expand their impact for children facing adversity,” said John Staud, the acting director of the Institute for Educational Initiatives. “Thousands of children in Telangana will benefit from the center’s work to improve their quality of life through sustainable efforts centered on whole-child development.”
Learn more about Project Sampoorna
The Institute for Educational Initiatives’ Global Center for the Development of the Whole Child at the University of Notre Dame collaborates with researchers and practitioners to ensure the wellbeing—physical, emotional, social, and cognitive—of children and adolescents in low-resource and conflict-affected settings. Using an innovative whole child development approach tailored to context-specific needs, we translate research into timely and thoughtful action, adapt research tools to improve the development of learning programs and policies, and activate systems such as families, schools, communities to ensure that children and adolescents can thrive.
