Tesco Collaborates with NASSCOM Foundation to Set Up its First Nook in Bengaluru

Tesco Bengaluru in partnership with NASSCOM Foundation inaugurated its first Nook, a self-learning centre at St. Joseph’s Convent School, Whitefield today as a part of its commitment to enhance the learning opportunities for the underprivileged. The Centre was inaugurated today by Dr. Sumit Mitra, CEO – Tesco Business Services & Tesco Bengaluru along with his leadership team and Mr. Ashok Pamidi – CEO, NASSCOM Foundation.

Tesco’s Nook aims to benefit people from disadvantaged communities and across age groups. Unlike the curriculum based programmes, the centre will offer a unique learning environment where learners design their own programmes based on their personal interest by using internet. The programmes vary from learning of computers or a language to acquiring skills or any talent based knowledge that can help them achieve their personal objectives. The learners work with centre managers to create goals every quarter and build projects in order to achieve those goals.

Speaking on the occasion, Dr. Sumit Mitra, CEO – Tesco Business Services & Tesco Bengaluru said, “At Tesco, our CSR strategy focuses on making a significant social impact for communities we serve, by investing in initiatives that make a lasting impact. Education is one of the focus areas for us and our endeavour is to create programmes that support young students and people from disadvantaged communities. With this commitment, we are proud to have partnered with NASSCOM Foundation and are happy to launch Nooks, one of its kind programme that encourages communities to learn without teachers by using internet. As part of this partnership, in January 2019, we also launched a Career Development Centre in the city that aims to enhance opportunities for employability of youth from underprivileged background.”

“We look forward to launch more initiatives to expand the impact of our efforts in the years to come, he added. Mr. Ashok Pamidi, CEO – NASSCOM Foundation said, "We are thankful to Tesco for their collaboration. Tesco Nook Centre is an innovative platform to self-learn and builds stronger local communities. It is an initiative to promote science, creativity and design thinking. We are looking forward to at least 30% of female enrolment in the centre. This is our pilot with Tesco on the Nook project and we are looking forward to more such collaborations to encourage out of the box, creative and innovative forms of learning”.

Nooks are self-learning spaces created within marginalized communities where learners design their own education through internet and experimentation without teachers. The centres are equipped with computers, internet and tools in order to build projects based on the learners’ needs and interests.

Project Defy (Design Education yourself) has established more than 10 Nooks since 2014 across Karnataka, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, Punjab, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Odisha, Tamil Nadu and a refugee camp in Uganda. NASSCOM Foundation will ensure the smooth running of the Tesco Nook centre by monitoring and evaluating the growth and development of the individuals and the programme, and its effect on the community.