Govt to launch Namma School portal to draw corporate funds

CHENNAI: In a first of its kind initiative, a ‘Namma School Portal’ is being developed to solicit support for the government schools in Tamil Nadu. Also in offing is a ‘Virtual Pavilion’, which will be launched as a technology-driven CSR.

“The objective is to source contributors and encourage them to donate funds for the improvement of Tamil Nadu government schools,” a senior official from Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA), under the School Education Department, said.

He said, “the portal and the pavilion will be central and seamlessly integrated with all CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) and fundraising initiatives”.

“The purpose of developing this online initiative is to customise, develop, deploy, operate, and also maintain the virtual pavilion integrated with the Namma School portal and organise related CSR conclaves and other promotional activities for fundraisings. This includes road shows, communication, and social media promotion,” he added.

He said, “these proposed initiatives also aim to funnel contributors and encourage them to donate funds for the improvement of Tamil Nadu government schools”.

He said the performance of the pavilion will be measured by the contributions received through the portal and the number of persons visiting and connecting through the pavilion.

The official further said the initiative will facilitate a live streaming page for each school, linked to YouTube plug and play. One can create video frames and stream them on YouTube live for schools for their pavilions, activities and celebrations.

On the ‘Namma School Album’ of events, he said, “aggregated, stored and curated locally at the school and robust algorithms to be developed for schools to add albums and aggregate the same with custom titling and listing.

The official said there would also be an alumni page with a list of alumni with their names, snaps, and year of passing which can be autonomously uploaded and organised with up to a three-level validation mechanism.

“Mechanism to draw data of alumni from the portal and central repositories including databases maintained by the department will also be available under the scheme,” he added.