How It Started

In our Founder’s words:

We hear lot ofstories about how farmers feel helpless, are burdened with crushing debt and cannot see a way out of their situation. Being part of a family with a long history in farming, I always believed Farmers are very important for the planet/people and provide a vital function. I heard about their predicament, not only through the news, but also from personal stories from friends and neighbors.

When discussing with locals, I was surprised at their ignorance on fundamentals like storage of crops, interest rates, fertility of soil etc. I realized that even a little education on the fundamentals of math and science would help them in many ways. Upon further deliberation, I felt that if we focus on the children and empower them, they could educate their parents and also be in a position to understand and implement, business and science concepts when they take up the responsibilities.
Coming to United States, being exposed to the teaching techniques here and seeing examples like Google where theoretical learning had practical applications, made me realize the advantages of hands on learning. The emphasis on learning the concepts & teaching how the concepts are important in real life makes learning fun and excites the imagination. That’s when I started reading about these teaching techniques and came across hands-on-learning.

I started playing with a couple of experiments and realized I was able to understand them better, and also able to retain the concepts longer. There was my answer! This is how our innovative Janyaa Lab In a Box (JLIB) started in 2009 where we started focusing on secondary education with 6-10th grades. We started designing experiments with “relevancy to daily life” using Design Thinking principles. For example, Ratio is taught with garlands.

Now comes the most important part of our program – “application of Science and Math concepts to daily life”. We encourage children to come up with models that solve their societal problems. They do this using the concepts they have learnt and of course their enhanced creative skills through JLIB program. We have numerous success stories documented on our blog.

Our success is what motivates us to go above and beyond to work with children.

More than 98% of your donations go directly to the cause. Janyaa is a 501c(3) organization and all donations are tax-deductible.