Mumbai News: NGOs Pratham And Rangeet Introduce Play-Based Learning In Govt Schools to Equip 28,000 Students with Life Skills In 2025

Mumbai: Non-profit organisations have joined hands to educate students in Mumbai's government schools through social, emotional and ecological knowledge. The initiative, which educated students through storytelling, role-play, games and discussions, aims to benefit 28,000 students in 2025.

In a partnership with a deep commitment to holistic education, social enterprise Rangeet and education non-profit Pratham Mumbai Education Initiative, have joined hands. The collaboration aims at bringing Rangeet’s proprietary digital platform and Social Emotional and Ecological Knowledge (SEEK) curriculum and teaching resources to government schools in Mumbai.

Till date, Rangeet is said to have impacted 5 lakh children across India. In Mumbai, the Rangeet-Pratham partnership started at 10,000 children and is increasing to approximately 28,000 children, 500 teachers and 50 schools this year. It helps teachers, parents and community members measurably develop every child with the skills vital to thrive. SEEK develops better learners and leaders by fostering the skills essential to thrive in a world where education is not evolving as rapidly as the jobs of the future.

Founded in 1994 in collaboration with UNICEF, Pratham focuses on innovative, low-cost, and scalable solutions to bridge learning gaps and make quality education more inclusive and accessible across India.

Its partnership with Rangeet reflects an important evolution in education which is an understanding that academic skills and rote learning aren’t enough to prepare children for today’s complex world of intolerance, changing jobs, climate anxiety and digital addictions.

By fostering agency and wellbeing, SEEK helps children build the skills they need to grow into empathetic, confident, and responsible citizens. This is an important moment in education reform because typically change is viewed as the domain of the privileged, which perversely has the effect of widening inequities. Rangeet specifically designed its platform listening to thousands of teachers to work in all contexts so that any child, anywhere and at any time benefits.

Simran Mulchandani, CEO and co-founder at Rangeet, said “We’re delighted to collaborate with Pratham, an organisation whose work we’ve admired for years, and from whom we have much to learn. We’ve heard wonderful stories from Rangeet classrooms around the country, including young boys standing up for the rights of women in Uttarakhand, children campaigning for water conservation in Rajasthan and increased attendance in Jharkhand on Rangeet days. Success for us will be hearing many more such stories and at scale.”

Farida Lambay, founder of Pratham, said, "We have collaborated with Rangeet for the last one year. The children in the schools we work at are busy, as their goal is academic excellence, but Rangeet and Pratham attempted to make the children happy, inculcate values and make them thinking human beings. What we want is that our children be future-ready, equipped with skills of self-care and a caring attitude."

Over the past year, teams from Rangeet and Pratham have worked closely in Mumbai in identifying and onboarding schools across Mumbai, conducting in-person teacher training sessions on how to use the Rangeet app and deliver the SEEK curriculum, coaching teachers through ongoing classroom visits and encouraging teachers to input real-time data through the app to measurably track progress.

Students have embraced the curriculum with enthusiasm, engaging in storytelling, role-play, games, discussions, design-thinking and team activities that help them learn skills like emotional resilience, communication and critical thinking, while exploring topics like mental health and climate change.