KIDSSTART INNO LAB is an education startup based out of Chennai, Tamilnadu, South India. KIDSSTART aims to promote DIY fun based learning methodology for school children in the rural Government schools in India. To start with, our main objective is to reach out to as many Government schools as possible in the Tamilnadu State and scale it up in other parts of the country in stages. The idea is to make Science and Mathematics as interesting as possible through experiential learning methodology integrating with the school curriculum. By partnering with the district Collectorate and the district education department we will actively engage in ethical and transparent practices of setting up our Science and Maths INNO LABS in Government schools in the rural areas of the State.

The Do It Yourself (DIY) kits are sourced within our hometown Chennai and through partners by our sourcing team and assembled as separate kits based on the number of experiments for classes 6, 7 & 8. Each lab session is a compulsive experience for the children in classes 6, 7 & 8 and becomes a life changer in their lives. KIDSSTART hopes to bring about a change in the lives of this otherwise financially challenged children. We will have absolute control over building and running of these labs in schools after taking necessary permissions from the education as well school authorities and get a written consent from the district collectorate to own this program as our own initiative and deliver results to keep all the stakeholders happy and smiling. Our INNO LAB sessions are unique in its operations, which is aimed towards exciting and inspiring children to the fullest of their creative abilities. After few years of our INNO LAB sessions these children will be fairly distinct in their thinking capabilities and will be at par with their peers in the urban part of the country.

Our mission is simple: Help children discover their scientific temperament at an early age and make Science integral part of their life as they grow and succeed in all walks of life.

Our way old way of teaching was to integrate experiential learning as well as theorem based, few decades ago, in many of our early part of childhood we used to experience various aspects of Science and Mathematics in our daily walks of life and learning happened in its natural course without our realizing it, but today in the name of technology everything is getting transformed into virtual learning through smart phones, smart classroom, online learning etc. this has disrupted and diluted the true learning aspect of things. Everything is result oriented and capabilities are adjudged by way of scoring marks and not much on learning the deep rooted fundamentals in many subjects. With the advent of technology, especially in India, this aspect of true learning is having its natural death and all the aspects of application skills is completely going amiss when it comes to handling real life situations. KIDSSTART’s intent is to increase awareness among the various stakeholders and continue upholding the spirit of innovation in children as the key driver across all its action points.

With your help, your donations will go towards:

1. We will be setting up of the INNO LAB inside the school for classes 6, 7 & 8 in rural Government schools.
2. The real beneficiaries of the donations are the children who fall predominantly into the Below Poverty Line (BPL) category.
3. We will meet the District Collector and the Chief Education Officer in the identified district and get their consent to set up our labs.
4. We will ideally start the lab sessions right from the first month of commencement of an academic year.
5. We will integrate the lab sessions as part of the regular school timetable.
   Sensitize all the stakeholders – Headmasters, teachers, parents and children at the beginning of the year and create awareness about the project in detail and seek their full cooperation and support.
6. Have a dedicated classroom of roughly 450 sq.ft area as INNO LAB room.
   Identify and train the lab instructors and make them be around when the lab sessions happen in the school.
7. The lab session will be two consecutive periods, say 80-90 minutes continuously.
   Each team will have two children as a pair and they will be given one DIY kit.
   The team will interact and learn playfully = in a fun oriented manner learning important concepts from the chosen subject.
8. Each year students will have 15 lab sessions and get to learn one concept in each lab session.
9. The concepts will have both curriculum as well as non-curriculum based activities.
10. Overall the money will be spent towards buying the DIY kits, train the lab instructors, monitor the progress of the project with periodic interventions, meet the stakeholders at regular intervals and ensure smooth running of the project, conducting base level / midline and end level assessments, creating and printing of manuals in English as well as other vernaculars, creation of other audio visual content materials, boarding lodging and travel costs for the operations team when the project is running at various schools / districts, audit and submission of the final report.

KIDSSTART is a Chennai based education start up initiative:

1. Co-founded by N Premkumar / O N Suryanarayanan in the year 2015
2. Mentor /Advisor – Dr. Prof T. S. Natarajan, Professor, Department of Physics / Dean – International Alumni Affairs, IIT Tirupati
3. Set up first model INNO LAB at BalaVidyaMandir School, Adyar, Chennai in 2016
4. Successfully running for the 4th consecutive year in BalaVidyaMandir handling about 400 students 
5. Set up 13 INNO LABS in 12 Government schools in Tiruvannamalai in the academic year 2019-20 handling 2543 students

KIDSSTART focuses on experiential learning approach

1. Helps in understanding even very difficult topics in science through our DIY kits
2. Makes it easy to understand theorems during regular class room sessions
3. Increases involvement to pursue learning and express themselves better
4. Backbenchers show keen interest after our INNO LAB sessions
5. Helps towards acquiring problem solving skills for students

KIDSSTART INNO LAB pilot project in Tiruvannamalai:

1. Set up 13 INNO LABS in 12 Government schools in Tiruvannamalai district in 2019-20
2. Project funded by Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited (BPCL) as a CSR funding
3. Totally 2,543 students benefit through this program
4. Predominantly nearly 60% students are in the Below Poverty Line (BPL) category
5. Project is running successfully for over 5 months now.
6. In the process of scaling up to reach out to students in more rurally backward areas