in India
Hitachi × Bodh Shiksha Samiti (India, NGO)
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Since the launch of Corporate Volunteering Program as part of the leadership training program, Hitachi, Ltd., the major conglomerate company, has sent over 30 employees to NGOs and Social Enterprises in Asia. In 2013, the company dispatched a 33-year-old engineer, Mr. Osamu Torigoe to an NGO in India, Bodh Shiksha Samiti. It runs community schools for children from low-income families in the slums and rural areas, as well as provides consultation for other schools such as teacher training programs. As part of the organization’s continuous efforts to raise education standards of the seven schools they run, they collected various data from each school. However, they had not been able to make an effective use of the data as they had not established methods for analysis and management. As an IT Engineer, Mr. Torigoe first conducted hearings with teachers and those who administrate schools, sorted out type of data to be handled and analyzed, and finally organized a workflow from data collection to analysis. By understanding the situations of each school and teacher, he designed a new Management Information System (MIS) that is easy to understand and manage for the actual users. This new MIS made it easier for the organization to detect even minor problems of each school, which was previously difficult to determine. Moreover, they can smoothly assess the effect of their countermeasures using the new MIS. In addition to the main work, Mr. Torigoe energetically contributed to school activities by organizing IT literacy class and Japanese paper-folding (origami) lesson for children.
At the end of the program, the director of Bodh Shiksha Samiti, Ms. Divya Bhatia said, “Mr. Torigoe contributed to our organization in various aspects. Instead of just doing what he was told, he made all kinds of efforts such as understanding the teachers’ IT level and workload to develop a user-friendly MIS. We are glad that he also proactively interacted with children and taught them Japanese culture.”Mr. Torigoe himself was impressed by the staffs’ dynamism in addressing complex social challenges in India. “Working along with those striving for the people in India, I realized that the convenient social system of Japan is the product of years of hard work by our devoted ancestors. I would like to reflect and contemplate what I can do for the future generation,” Mr. Torigoe exclaimed.
