Our Bureau
New York, NY
The United States Department of Education awarded this year’s prestigious Fulbright-Hays Program to NJ based non-profit organization, Yuva Hindi Sansthan. The organization is engaged in teaching Hindi to US born school kids since 2010.
“This is a unique opportunity for educators and students to visit India on a study tour for one month and study the impact of climate change”, said Ashok Ojha, YHS program director, who is responsible for conducting this program.
According to Ojha, Fulbright-Hays Study-Tour Program is fully funded by the US Dept. of Education. “We are recruiting twelve participants from a diverse group of teachers, emerging teachers and college students with a career goal to teach Hindi, culture, social sciences, environmental sciences and arts at elementary, middle, high and community colleges in the U.S. The participants will travel to India, study climate change and develop K-14 curricula for Hindi learners in the USA.”, said Ojha.
Ojha and Prof. Gabriela Nik Ilieva, of New York University, will lead the study Tour to India for one month by end of the year 2022. During the one-month study tour participants will collect and organize topic-based audio, video and textual materials as resources for developing the final thematic curriculum documents. this material will be used to develop curriculum documents in Hindi and area studies. The Curriculum materials will be disseminated in the United States in order to support and enhance language learning and teaching.
Yuva Hindi Sansthan is supported by a partnership with New York University (NYU), University of Texas at Austin (UTA), Michigan State University and Kumaun University, Nainital, India. The Consulate General of India, New York, NY, is also supporting the program.
The program is designed to mentor U.S.-based community and other school and college Hindi teachers, and college students in education to expand their knowledge about the Hindi language and culture of modern India and increase their proficiency.
A mini-conference will be held in Spring 2023 to showcase the curriculum developed by the group.
Ashok Ojha, a journalist and teacher by profession is also the director of the Fulbright-Hays program. Ojha is a K-12 certified teacher for Social Studies content area. He has been consistently awarded US Government grants since 2010 for directing STARTALK Hindi Programs. He manages two non-profit organizations, Yuva Hindi Sansthan and Hindi Sangam Foundation, both dedicated to promotion of Hindi language in USA and beyond. A prolific scrip writer and media professional Ashok produced dozens of Film and Video documentaries on socio-cultural topics, such as, ‘Tribal Welfare’, Girl’s Education’ and ‘Child Labor’.
