Current program We reopened our learning center at Mazumdar Shaw Cancer Center in Narayana Hrudalaya on 8 March 2021. We continue to support the children through a combination of remote and in-person teaching, providing tailored digital educational content on the Samiksha USky learning platform. To volunteer, please sign up and contact valli@samikshafoundation.org immediately. Support this program The cost of education of one child-seat is Rs. 2400/- per month. (A child-seat indicates one child being supported at a given point of time: the total number of child-seats remains mostly constant in each ward at a given time, although the individual children being supported will vary over time.

As said rightly by one of our children: " Now ALL children are on level playing field. Cancer or Covid or otherwise. All children are in lockdown, not able to go to school- for us it was always like that. Now they will understand our un-happpiness aunty!" Due to COVID-19 and the associated lockdown, all our centers were closed since 24 March 2020. We continued to support the hospitals with COVID-19 related work, as there is a need for volunteers, blood donors, and PPE donors, and emergency medical support for the children being treated at KMIO.

2020 mission statement Over the last few years, with an awareness of both the need for continued education and non-medical support for children undergoing cancer treatment in recognition of our success, and in line with the mission of the Foundation, we continue to explore the theme ‘Looking Ahead’ as part of our growth strategy in 2020. We are now into our 12th year, providing integrated educational support for children undergoing cancer treatment at the Kidwai Cancer Institute and the Mazumdar Shaw Cancer Centre, Narayana Hrudalaya.

Eliminate ‘Learning Poverty’ - support reading and vocabulary for every child! We maintain a library at every learning center. The children are encouraged to borrow books from the library and to write reviews of or discuss the books they have read. The library includes books in English, books in vernacular languages, and multilingual books. Our resource partners for this program are Pratham Books and Tulika Publications and Funky Rainbow With Samiksha 2.

The Centre of Excellence is the Foundation office in Bengaluru, where administrative work and teacher and volunteer training are carried out. Research Space We plan to expand our research into the education of children in life-limiting situations (life-threatening illnesses and non-communicable diseases), to better enable their re-entry into school and empower them with learning and knowledge, notwithstanding their circumstances. We are exploring the use of educational technology and AI to better serve the learning needs of children in these situations.

All children are special. In this program, we try to find out what each one likes and fulfil some of their wishes to make them feel even more special. In recent times there have been other challenges. We recently made an appeal to the Department of Education for our student Late Rafika Banu: please see our tribute page for more information. Other pictures of our children and team static/images/uploads/rafika-scholarship-2019-team.jpg static/images/uploads/rafika-own-testimonial.jpg

This Program has been renewed at wards at the Learning Centers once a week for the children at SFLC@MSCC-NH Until then we plan to conduct online Yoga Instructions through our Learning Platform as Lesson Plans. Swami Yogaratna developed the first yoga program for our kids at the ward in 2009. The children and caregivers are encouraged to practise the exercises they learn each day. She has now enhanced the yoga and meditation sessions with Art expression with creative visualisation, based on the guidelines of Carl and Stephanie Simonton.