Empowering through education

Editor’s note: The names of the Indian students throughout this story have been changed to protect their privacy.

When Anaya was in third grade in a primary school outside Hyderabad, India, she was told she would have to arrive an hour before the other students each day to clean the classrooms and toilets. Once she reached her class, she was often isolated, bullied, and overlooked.

Because she was born into a tribal community, Anaya was defined as a second-class student who would never rise above manual labor status.

Although the caste system in India was formally abolished in 1950, the effects of a hierarchy that was in place for more than 3,000 years are still evident today. Many people in India still adhere to the view that those born into the impoverished lower castes and tribal groups are not equal and can never achieve upward mobility.

After years of isolation and mistreatment at school, Anaya entered a residential school specifically for girls from vulnerable groups in fifth grade. Her first semester was difficult. Four hours away from home and feeling homesick, she often cried at night and had trouble concentrating in the classroom. When her father visited, she begged to go home.

But all that changed for Anaya in sixth grade—when Project Sampoorna was implemented in her school.

Through Project Sampoorna, Notre Dame’s Global Center for the Development of the Whole Child is creating a holistic education curriculum focused on giving marginalized children in India the life skills they need to succeed—including critical thinking, self-agency, self-esteem, and empathy.

Neil Boothby, a Notre Dame professor and the center’s director, and a team from the University’s Institute for Educational Initiatives began training teachers in the Indian state of Telangana in 2021 on how to introduce social-emotional learning and whole child development concepts. Using interactive games and skits to engage students, the program teaches educators how to provide a more nurturing, inclusive learning environment.

For Anaya, that meant learning to work together with her peers to safeguard a teammate during a cooperative game called “caterpillar tag” and being empowered to share her feelings during circle time.

One pivotal moment for her came during a class discussion that followed a skit on the dangers of body shaming. A classmate, Bani, shared that she was being teased because of her dark skin. Anaya realized that she had been one of the students who had teased her, but she’d never known how hurtful her words had been. She raised her hand, stood up in front of her class, apologized, and said she would never do it again.

That lesson was further underscored during Protection Circle—Anaya’s favorite game.

“I like being in the middle and having my friends protect me from those trying to get inside the circle to tag me,” she said. “It made me think of Bani and how we need to protect her from cruel words.”

Now in seventh grade, Anaya wants to go to college to become a teacher, like the ones who present the Sampoorna curriculum at her school.

“I want to become a teacher like Madame Chandra. She makes all of us believe we can succeed with hard work,” she said.

‘We succeed together’

Anaya’s story, Boothby said, is typical of the more than 270,000 children in the 451 residential schools run by the Telangana Tribal Welfare Residential Educational Institutions Society (known as “the Society”), an office of the Indian state government dedicated to improving educational outcomes for marginalized students.

“When we were doing our assessments, we found many girls that in order to go to school had to clean bathrooms. We saw boys who couldn’t eat at the same table as the other boys and were forced to sit in the back of the classroom. And we found that they were unable to learn,” Boothby said. “We needed to find ways to support and empower those children, and that’s how Project Sampoorna was born.

“In the local language, sampoorna means ‘completeness’ or ‘wholeness,’ and that resonates with our approach to whole child development. We succeed together.”

Although India had the fastest-growing economy in the world in 2024, Boothby noted that children from these underprivileged communities are not equipped to take advantage of the country’s educational and economic progress—and are in danger of being left behind.

“Within the Indian education system, there’s a real emphasis on academic achievement and tests, because it’s through tests that you advance. There’s a lot of pressure,” he said. “What’s left out are those skills that are related to life success. So, in today’s economy in India, you have to learn how to work cooperatively. You have to be able to think outside of the box and think critically. You have to innovate. Those are some of the elements that we’re bringing into the school culture.”

In 2020, Boothby was approached by the Society about a potential partnership with Notre Dame. Boothby, who has held leadership positions at UNICEF, the UN Refugee Agency, and the US federal government, believed the project aligned well with the University’s Catholic mission and its focus on human solidarity and concern for the common good.

It is also a prime example of the type of work Notre Dame seeks to support through the Poverty Initiative outlined in the University’s new strategic framework, he said.

“I’ve done this kind of work for quite some time, with operational organizations and in academia,” he said. “And that’s given me a realistic idea of how academia can contribute to solving problems in the world. And what I love about Notre Dame—and why it is such a special home for me and for the center—is the way it sees itself as a potential force for good in the world. Now, with the strategic framework, which puts a focus on poverty alleviation at its center, it is better equipped to do that than ever.”

Scaling up Project Sampoorna

With support from the philanthropic organization Porticus, Boothby and his team began implementing Project Sampoorna in 16 Society schools in the first year, many of which were facing significant problems with bullying, vandalism, and body shaming.

Using a data-driven, implementation science approach, the team drew from global, national, and local research to design the program. They incorporated frequent opportunities for feedback and evaluation so that they could quickly modify the curriculum.

“At Notre Dame, research is essential, and it’s very important to us that we continue to learn as we move forward,” he said. “Once the program is designed, it has to create its own evidence base. So, we embed a lot of rapid learning into what we do. Within a matter of weeks, we can tell whether certain things are working or not working and make adjustments.”

After the first year, the project scaled up to 61 schools, offering teachers from each school an intensive, 24-day training program and then supporting them as they, in turn, trained their colleagues in the curriculum.

Daravath Sunitha, who teaches mathematics in Palakurthy, India, said that Project Sampoorna has helped her build trust with her students and given her new teaching strategies.

“Kids leave their parents to come here, and that’s always scary,” she said. “Project Sampoorna has helped them to open up so much as we assure them that this is a safe place. It has given us tools to comfort them. Even our older students have learned to care for the younger ones.”

The project not only focuses on social-emotional learning, but also helps teachers reevaluate how they approach their subject areas. To enhance student engagement and improve critical thinking skills, teachers are taught to move from a traditional lecture style to one that facilitates classroom discussion and encourages student questions and problem solving.

“For a math teacher, the blackboard is everything. We always need to write something on it,” Sunitha said. “But now, I make a point of standing among my students when I teach—that’s a new strategy I learned.”

Sunitha’s training has also had some unexpected benefits, she said, by helping her foster more positive relationships with her fellow teachers, as well as her students.

“Project Sampoorna taught me confidence,” Sunitha said. “It taught me how to lead trainings for my colleagues. I am the youngest teacher in my school, but I learned how to speak to older teachers, how to work through conflicts, and how to encourage them to implement the project.”

Creating a safe space for marginalized children

On campus, Boothby shares his research with his students in a class on childhood and education in the Global South. And last summer, three Notre Dame undergraduates had the opportunity to experience Project Sampoorna’s impact firsthand in Hyderabad, with support from the Global Center for the Development of the Whole Child.

Seniors Heaven Carter and Tanish Goel and sophomore Arishta Goel each taught a conversational English class in Society schools in and around Hyderabad, while incorporating elements of Project Sampoorna in their classrooms.

“In a conversation with the head of the Society, he pointed out that one of the major obstacles to their students’ success is the inability to speak English because they come from communities in which the native language is Telugu,” Boothby said. “He asked if Notre Dame could also work in this space, so we asked three of our students to come to India as sort of pioneers. They did remarkable work, and we learned a lot. We now hope to create a larger, more formal program where more Notre Dame students could come in and hopefully make a difference.”

Carter, who is majoring in psychology and history, first learned about the project while taking Boothby’s class. She spent 10 weeks in India over the summer as a project intern, supporting the team as they prepared the curriculum for teacher training and teaching English to children in fifth, sixth, and seventh grades.

“It was a phenomenal opportunity,” she said. “I’d heard about Project Sampoorna and seen video testimonies in class, but being able to come to India, interact with the students, and see the project in action is very impactful.

“I hope I have come away from it more compassionate and more willing to go outside my comfort zone. And I hope I can share this opportunity with other students to encourage them to do so as well.”

Carter quickly noticed a positive impact from the Project Sampoorna concepts she introduced to her class. During circle times, activities such as “the Blob Tree”—where students looked at a drawing of cartoon-like characters depicting various emotions and chose the one they identified with at that moment—helped her students articulate their feelings and develop empathetic listening skills.

“It was very refreshing to see so many students excited to share their emotions and maybe things they had been struggling with,” Carter said. “It creates a safe space for them to open up and get comfortable with speaking and supporting each other.

“The kids were also so happy to share with me how they put the skills they learned into practice. One day, we worked on the concept of compassion. And the next day, one of the students spoke up and said, ‘I was able to practice compassion with my friend who was sad.’ It was so rewarding to see them understand the importance of these skills.”

Arishta Goel, who is from Mumbai, India, said her experience in Hyderabad last summer gave her a new perspective on the lasting effects of the caste system.

“In Telangana, children from impoverished communities are facing language barriers and issues stemming from the caste system, which is still prevalent in many rural areas of India. And that’s something I didn’t see when I was growing up in an urban setting where people don’t believe in that anymore,” Goel said. “It was incredible to see the impact of Project Sampoorna and what it can do.“

Goel, a finance and environmental science major with a minor in real estate, said she was drawn to Notre Dame because of the University’s commitment to service. She had volunteered as a tutor throughout high school with Teach for India, where she first realized how transformative education could be for children on the margins.

“That was a huge reason why I chose to come to Notre Dame,” she said. “I wanted to continue using my education to give back to the community. And once I was here, that led me to get involved with Project Sampoorna.

“Even though I had worked with Teach for India, this experience was unmatched because it wasn’t just academic training we were doing—we were actually teaching children how to better communicate, how to build relationships with each other, and just helping them develop as well-rounded people.”

A holistic education

Moving forward, Boothby and the Global Center for the Development of the Whole Child hope to expand Project Sampoorna to all 451 Society schools in Telangana.

At the request of the state government, the center also developed a whole child development course that was rolled out in 2023 at Osmania University, one of the oldest and most prestigious institutions in India. Based on the course’s initial success, the team then implemented it in all 78 of the university’s campuses across Telangana last year.

The class, which covers the concepts addressed in Project Sampoorna, will be required for all education students. It has the potential to fundamentally shift the way educators approach their work and their students from their first day in the classroom, Boothby said.

“This is an exciting opportunity to ensure that every new teacher who enters the state’s schools—not just Society schools, but all public schools as well—will have this knowledge,” Boothby said. “In the long term, this is the best way to embed these concepts into the system and change the pedagogical approach to teaching.”

Boothby and his team are also launching a similar course this year for more than 200 Society teachers, each representing a different school in the state. And they continue to evaluate and research the success of the project rigorously. They are seeing compelling examples of positive change in students, teachers, teacher trainers, and principals, Boothby said.

“To be able to come to India and see the work that’s taking place in the schools, to listen to the teachers who have gone through this program and hear how excited they are to learn new skill sets and to see these changes in their students—there’s nothing else I would rather do,” Boothby said.

“There’s no better way to create pathways out of poverty for children on the margins of society than to do it through education, holistic education that promotes life skills and potential success.”