Ashok Leyland’s Road to School (RTS) programme has won businessline’s Changemaker award in the Chairperson’s Award category, which has been introduced this year.

The firm’s initiative was first conceived to address poor learning outcome in government primary schools in the remote districts of Tamil Nadu.

Starting with 36 schools in Krishnagiri district, the RTS programme has now expanded to 2,400 schools impacting 2,30,000-plus students across five States – Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Jammu & Kashmir, Uttar Pradesh and Assam.

It also has an outreach in Alwar in Rajasthan and Bhandara in Maharashtra.

The motivation behind RTS was to build a strong foundation for primary school children by conducting remedial classes, bridging the learning gap, developing foundational literacy and numeracy, promoting hygiene and wellness, and unleashing their creativity through art.

On the programme’s win, Shenu Agarwal, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, Ashok Leyland, said, “The Road to School programme is in its ninth year now. We started small with 30 odd schools and now we are very proud to have reached 2,400 schools spread across six States and we have partnered with more than 3,00,000 students.”

Agarwal said that the company aims to impact one- million students by 2030.

“Our mission is to impact one million students over the next few years. We have set up a target of 2030 to reach that milestone,” he said, adding that the company is looking at some more States to expand, including one of the Northeastern States, looking at government schools for students from classes I to VIII.

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