Using radio as a teaching tool for underprivileged children, Radio City partnered with cycle candy vendors to create pop-up English schools across Dharavi and other slum areas. The idea is to use children’s love for candy as an attraction and to make them learn English.
The programme was launched on April 24 in the slums of Dharavi. Candy vendors on bicycles who visit slum dwellings daily have been provided FM receivers and megaphones. They have been incentivised to park their cycles in specific localities every Sunday at definite timings. During this time, Radio City 91.1 FM airs specially designed lessons on spoken English for 10 minutes.
Candy being a natural draw for the kids, all the vendors have to do is tune in to Radio City on their FM receivers at the designated time slot and play the on-air English lesson.
Free candy is given to every kid who sits through the whole lesson. “Radio reaches almost entire India where approximately 30 million children live in slums. We want to use radio as a tool of education and get children involved in an interesting way. Knowledge of English has become an economic enabler now and so we believe this act will help street and slum children to a great extent,” said Kartik Kalla EVP as Functional Head – Programming , Marketing and AudaCITY, Radio City.
Initiated in the slums of Mumbai, the network looks to scale the program up to 10 cities to begin with. “Candy Class is an ambitious project and we have rolled out the first phase. Dharavi, as one of Mumbai’s largest slums, seemed to be the right place to start our efforts to give back to Mumbai in a special way under the ambit of Rag Rag Mein Daude City.
Using the power and reach of radio to make a difference to the lives of these children might help them gather a lifeskill that they might not otherwise have been fortunate enough to get,” said Abraham Thomas, CEO, Radio City. The idea for Candy Class was developed in partnership with GREY group India and looks to impact 3,000,000 children nationally. ACORN Foundation India, affiliated to ACORN International, is partnering on the activity in order to help build a sustainable model to popularise and scale up this project in Dharavi.
