India has the world’s largest student population of which about 90 million don’t have access to quality education; almost 8 million have never even been inside a school.

‘The Open Door Project’ is an initiative with a powerful proposition and potential for huge social impact. By bringing attention to this important initiative and its potential to impact the future of disadvantaged students, important stakeholders in the education ecosystem were inspired to join the movement.

All this has been achieved at a time when the country is in the midst of national elections and ‘soft’ news doesn’t get much space

India has the world’s largest population of young minds and could be a global economic powerhouse if not for a broken education system. There’s a real risk that instead of reaping its demographic dividends, the country might instead find itself crippled with the world’s largest population of illiterates. Millennium World School one of India’s largest chains of elite schools with over 35,000 students wanted to do something about the issue. While governments have been trying, the quality of education and infrastructure is severely lacking. Absentee teachers and broken amenities mean public schools lack even basic facilities. The objective was to find a way for the school to be relevant, not just for its students but to try to fundamentally change society itself. The challenge was that it’s not only the lack of infrastructure that is crippling, it is also the societal mindset of apathy, that nothing really can be anyway.

While India has some good private schools with great infrastructure, they wastefully sit idle once the schools shut after classes every afternoon. The idea was simply to open a door and provide access to the most underprivileged. ‘The Open Door Project’ was created when The Millennium World School opened its doors to underprivileged children after regular classes and devoted its own infrastructure, resources, and teachers. It also reached out to volunteers, activists, and NGOs to be part of the movement with a short film and on-ground activation. The outreach involved carrying the message through marginalized communities and neighborhoods to drive enrollments. What this one school has demonstrated is that the potential for transformation is huge. If the 350,000 odd private schools in India each take just 100 kids, we will have 30 million children getting access to quality education.

It is normally difficult to get a share of voice for softer, human-interest stories in a ‘breaking-news’ oriented media. This idea was presented as a breakthrough project with an implementable basis – something that had proved itself and can be implemented by others as well. We brought the ‘good news’ potential to the interest of media – in a world torn by strife, a piece of simple feel-good, heart-warming news.

We networked support through multiple angles – NGOs from the education sector, stakeholders – all became pegs for stories from different standpoints. We used the elitist tag – threw the gauntlet to other private schools to follow the example – and made media an accomplice. This allowed us a free run with an otherwise blasé media, which tends to see this as boutique news. The result was that the story became a campaign - and more and more schools were compelled to consider partnerships of a similar kind. Stories were seeded around the launch film ‘Bhukkad’ that movingly portrayed an impoverished boy hungry for education. Important data was collated to present the criticality of the issue and the genius solution provided by ‘The Open Door Project’. Media attention was secured by holding a candle to the efforts by one such school.

• We garnered coverage in important media outlets – print and online, reaching education stakeholders and target audiences that included policy makers, the K12 education community, NGOs, parents, students and volunteers.

• The thrust of the media outreach was the successful incubation of an idea for inclusion of kids that were out of the formal, quality school education network.

• In a short span of two weeks over 42 media impressions have been generated in leading dailies and online coverage, that include almost all important, education related media with all the media stories carrying the key message in their headlines. Many carried pictures of disadvantaged children studying at one such school.

• ‘The Open Door Project’ trended on Twitter two weeks in a row.

• Many opinion leaders, post learning about the initiative from media, took to their social media handles to support the movement.

• Bollywood celebrities, among the biggest influencers in India, added to the momentum with a select few putting out supportive tweets.

• In just a few weeks six of the leading NGOs working with such children came on board ‘The Open Door Project’ and many more have reached out to join hands.

• Total media impression (till date): 42

• Total reach: 21.6 million

• Earned media: INR 11 Million (USD 157,400 appx.)