Summer is in full swing, and the end-of-year report card distribution already feels like a distant memory. At E-tanoda, we welcomed the summer break with joy, as we have just completed an exceptionally successful year. Let's take a look at what we've been up to this year!

First and foremost, who are we?

Since January 2017, the 21st Century Pedagogy Foundation has been operating under the name E-tanoda, running a mentor program for disadvantaged students who are on the periphery of the formal education system. In this program, high school students from Budapest mentor disadvantaged peers, mostly from the Ormánság region, using digital learning materials online.

Our Results from 2021/22

September started successfully, with a record number of students signing up. A total of 63 mentors and educational material developers from high schools decided to complete their school community service at E-tanoda, forming 37 independent study groups. Additionally, university volunteers participated in the program, helping us conduct 14 large group case discussion trainings. These monthly meetings are the cornerstone of our operations - they address current issues, provide supervision opportunities, and train mentors in a learner-centered teaching approach (such as competency-based teaching, handling disadvantageous situations, motivation, etc.).

We concluded the year with a total of 445 hours of teaching and 1060 hours of volunteer work (with our partners, our combined teaching hours exceed 600!).

Collaborations - Who Are We Working With?

This year, Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE) also contributed to our successful operation. Under the guidance of an intern, the pre-edited materials on the E-tanoda platform were reviewed and often corrected. Additionally, we collaborated with a project team from ELTE PPK led by Katalin Tókos, in which four university students developed an online mentor training program tailored to our organization's needs.

We had two major collaborations in the past school year. InDaHouse edited worksheets on the E-tanoda platform. We assisted them in creating quality ICT materials through training and regular meetings, thereby contributing to the mentoring of an additional 26 children.

We also worked with the NextStep Association, where our mentors hold monthly online book clubs for children living in Hungary who are not native Hungarian speakers.

Grants and Support - Thank You!

We provide equipment to our mentees to help create the necessary environment for learning. This year, we received donations of 15 new laptops (European Investment Bank), 25 iPads (EON Hungária Group), and 55 SIM cards (Yettel Hungary Ltd.). Thanks to HVG, we distributed 260 reward books. For the first time, we also participated in the campaign for the 1% tax donation.

Most of the mentors enjoyed participating in the program and reported improvements in communication, empathy, patience, and teaching skills.

"It helped improve my explanatory skills, and I feel I can communicate better with people. Additionally, I gained some insight into the knowledge of teaching transfer," said one of the mentors.

At our year-end meeting, many pleasant experiences from teaching were recalled.

"My mentee missed school, so we started building his knowledge of solving equations from scratch (in 3 hours), and when he returned to school, he told me in the next class that the teacher praised him and that with the help of the math teacher, he now understands and wants to solve more equations because they are so easy."

Looking back at our achievements in 2022/23, we close the school year with satisfaction and are enthusiastically preparing for the fall. Of course, we don’t sit idly during the summer either - our mentors are helping the children in the Fonyód refugee camp catch up with the Hungarian education system. If you're curious about how we work, follow our Facebook page.