Ambassadors Of Hope’ Say No To COVID-19

Taking part in the BW Dialogue episode on ‘Hope in times of the pandemic’, Punjab Education Minister Vijay Inder Singla talks about the state’s ‘Ambassadors of Hope’ campaign and how the initiative boosted the morale of the students during the pandemic

The COVID-19 crisis has entirely changed the way the world used to operate. In these unprecedented times, among other sec­tors, education is also the one which has been strongly impacted. There has been a sudden shift to online learning without proper planning, espe­cially in countries like In­dia, where the backbone for e-learning was not ready and the curriculum was not designed for such a format. 

BW Education hosted a dialogue on “Hope in Times of The Pandemic”, in association with BW Businessworld. Vijay In­der Singla, Minister of Education, Government of Punjab discusses the same with Vinesh Menon, CEO - Education, Skilling & Consulting, Ampersand Group and Dr Annurag Batra, Chair­man & Editor-in-Chief, BW Businessworld & ex­change4media Group.

The discussion mainly revolved around the over­all vision of education for the state of Punjab, the success points of ‘Ambas­sadors of Hope’ initiative (a massive online com­petition covering 18 lakh students) launched by the government of Punjab and the road ahead for education, which have been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Speaking about the last 60 days, Vijay In­der Singla, Minister of Education, Government of Punjab, said, “It has been a difficult time for all of us and everybody in their own way was trying to fight the Coronavi­rus, and we were all try­ing to take precautions and discharge our re­sponsibilities side by side, to the best of our abili­ties and to the best of the situation available because nobody was ac­tually prepared for such a situation to happen in our country.”

“This ‘Ambassadors of Hope’ initiative, which we tried to launch as an online competition across the state of Punjab, proved to be a very successful campaign”

He also added, “As far as Punjab is concerned, my Chief Minister took the lead and imposed a cur­few. We were able to per­form better in our state, as compared to other states and other states should also perform like Punjab. India, as a coun­try, as a whole, should get rid of this virus, as early as possible.”

Speaking about the ‘Ambassadors of Hope’ campaign, the Minister said, “The Punjab government took very good initiatives and that was the only reason we were able to control the Coro­navirus until now and we intend to do so in the days to come as well. As a responsible citizen, each one of us contributed to the social sector.” He fur­ther added: “Everybody tried to contribute to the society. Subsequently, looking from the per­spective of my responsi­bility in this government as a PWD Minister and as an Education Minis­ter, challenges are there.” 

“But yes, we were able to start one beautiful pro­gramme, ultimately be­cause of the participation of youngsters from across the state of Punjab. From the borders, from the ru­ral areas, from the urban areas, from the private schools, from the govern­ment schools, everybody participated, contributed and uploaded 106,000 videos about how they could take out themselves  from this negativity in the pandemic situation, and how they think they can convert it into a posi­tivity thing.” 

Talking more about the initiative, he said, “This ‘Ambassadors of Hope’ initiative, which we tried to launch as an online competition across the state of Punjab, proved to be a very successful campaign.”

Vinesh Menon, CEO - Education, Skilling & Consulting, Ampersand Group, appreciated the initiative “Ambassadors of Hope” and said that in times when we were all worried about its ef­fect on adults, we under­mined the impact on kids. This initiative boosted children’s morale. In the last 35-40 days, they were busy exploring the ways to be heard.

Throwing light on the post-COVID scenario, Me­non said, “Pre-COVID-19, the whole ethos of edu­cation was around brick and mortar schools and technology acted as an enabler out there but post-COVID, e-platforms would be the real mecha­nism of learning and the brick and mortar schools/institutions would be­come the enablers.”