Education India Project #9433

Educate & empower 3,600 kids in Jharkhand, India

by India Literacy Project

Project Report | Jun 4, 2014
Our Success Stories...

By Subhash Pochareddy | Projects Volunteer

We continue to move along steadily in improving enrollment and attendance in our area of work. But, it's not just about numbers! In this update, we present two success stories - fruits of our efforts in this project.

***** Rehabilitating an Out-of-School Child *****

Nine-year old Akshay* (name changed) was enrolled in Grade 1 of his village school in Kordaha. He attended school regularly in Grade 1 and a few months in to Grade 2 but discontinued going to school from April 2013. His father’s excessive alcohol consumption and violent behavior at home affected Akshay and led to him abandoning school completely. As a result, his name was removed from the school register in the academic year of 2013-14.

During the door-to-door survey, Chetna Vikas (CV) team found that Akshay had dropped out of school. The CV team inquired about his past and met with the school headmaster to discuss his situation. The head master assured that he would re-enroll Akshay Now, there was a need to improve the family environment that was affecting Akshay's interest to attend school. The CV team met his parents multiple times and sensitized them about their parental responsibility towards their son's future. They eventually wanted the CV team to educate Akshay and give him skills to earn a livelihood.

CV team then had to counsel Akshay many times before he finally agreed to go back to school. He was re-enrolled in Grade 3 in February 2014, and the headmaster provided great support by giving him extra time for continuing in his class. Now he is a regular student and performing well and enjoying his study and leisure time with friends.

***** A School Management Committee President Takes Control of His School *****

ILP & Chetna Vikas (CV) started the intervention in Tilakpur village in Dumka district, Jharkhand in April 2013. The Upper Primary School had 68 children attending from 3 different communities. The school also had two para teachers - temporary teachers appointed by the Government. The school had lots of problems - teachers were not attending on a regular basis, not teaching properly, not implementing the school development activities, and not showing the details of the school accounts to the School Management Committee (SMC) members. The children were irregular to school because the teachers did not maintain a consistent schedule.

Mr. Ramdeo Yadayji was the SMC vice-president of this school and then became the president in 2012. The CV team facilitated regular SMC meetings in this school but Mr. Ramdeo was not actively engaged initially. The CV team spent time to provide him more information and training regarding his roles and responsibilities that led him to become an active participant in the SMC meetings as the president. He started supervising the school by visiting every other day. During his visits he observed that teachers came late to school, were not following the timetable, and were never teaching the children.

He asked the teachers to change their attitude for the sake of a better future of the children. The two teachers did not heed his advice. So one day in in October 2013, Mr. Ramdeo locked up the school before the teachers arrived. All the villagers actively supported Ramdeo for his courageous move. When teachers reached school, the villagers did not allow them to enter the school until they admitted to their mistakes and promised to make amends. The teachers felt humiliated and promised to ensure better performance!!

Currently (May 2014), the teachers continue to come to school at the right time. Ramdeo also participates in the School Development Planning (SDP), and shows the school accounts data to all the SMC members (transparency & accountability). He also supervises the distribution of the mid-day meals in the school.

Led by Ramdeo’s passionate and courageous leadership, the SMC of this village received an award of recognition during an SMC Maha Sammelan (a state-level SMC forum) organized by Jharkhand RTE Forum in March 2014.

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Jan 29, 2014
More kids enrolled, further increase in attendance at schools

By AL Rangarajan | Program Manager, India Literacy Project

Campaigns to bring children back to school

Pre Schools:

Project covers 28 Pre Schools (Anganwadi Centers - AWC).
8 AWC conducted mothers meeting every month without the persuasion or support of ILP project staff. 4 AWC conducted 5 meeting and others are slowly moving towards conducting meetings by themselves.
16 orientation training were conducted for Mothers’ committee members and Village Health and Sanitation Committee (VHSC) as against 14 planned for the period. 534 participants including 14 Panchayat Raj members participated.
14 new AWC have been opened during the period; # of children on enrollment in 15 old AWC increased to 606 and the new AWC 439 children are enrolled.
Attendance is at 56% children (590 out of 1045) attend regularly. 67% attendance is achieved in old AWC and 41% attendance is there in the newly started AWC.

Schools:

The project is currently covering 3639 children in 36 schools.
Attendance has improved from 61 to 65% (2365 children out of 3639 are regularly attending to schools as per our own attendance monitoring system).
In consultation with the community, in order to improve girl child education and arrest girl child dropout rates, girl child education support program has been evolved. It has been decided to support 3 girls from each village and accordingly in 27 villages, 81 girls were extended with girl child education support.
Child parliament Balsansad) capacity building program was conducted in 32 schools between April to September 2013. 18 schools could do the capacity building efforts on their own and 9 schools are not that regular in conducting Bal sansad programs.
Education material was distributed to re-enrolled dropout 129 children to facilitate them to continue their education from 27 villages. The highlight of this is the village communities were fully involved in evolving the selection criteria, identifying children and distributing the support.
A panchayat level consultation meeting was organized covering two Gram panchayats and involving 20 PRI members on the status of education of children in these villages.
A 3 day workshop was conducted for the benefit of project staff on RTE, school development plan and SMC members training as strategy for project improvement.

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Oct 8, 2013
Progress in the Second Year

By Dinesh Kotti | Project Facilitator

ILP continues to make great strides in this project. We are happy to share with you our accomplishments over the academic year of 2012-2013, including some we have already mentioned in the quarterly reports.

Pre-Schools

Due to regular interaction with the parents, door to door visits and parent counseling, attendance of 368 children in 16 pre-schools has improved from 55% to 69%
Breakfast is provided in 8 centers regularly while lunch is provided in 14 centers. Food is prepared under hygienic conditions in 9 centers and portable drinking water is available in 13 centers through joint efforts of the NGO and Mothers committees.
Children in 15 pre-schools were given slates and pencils
Mothers committees were activated in 9 pre-schools and 132 meetings with 2,417 participants were conducted.
20 Village Health and Sanitation committee (VHSC) capacity building training sessions were held in which 288 Mothers committee members, 161 VHSC members and 186 community members participated.
Nukkad Nataks (Street plays) were held in 20 villages to increase awareness of people about importance of education especially for girls 3 to 16 years, the role of parents and community in education, the role of children in addressing issues concerning them and community. As a result of these street plays, there was considerable increase in the attendance of children in pre-schools and schools and the community has begun actively participating in issues related to education.

Schools

In the past year out of 1952 students enrolled in 18 schools, 1192 students are regularly attending the classes. The average attendance increased from 53% to 61%. This has been achieved by multi-pronged efforts including sensitizing parents to the ill effects of keeping their children at home to support domestic work, training teachers to be patient and avoid any type of corporal punishment.
73 children have been re-enrolled in the past year, leading to a 55% (205 /317) re-enrollment in the past 2 years. In some villages, this includes a 100% re-enrollment.
Two learning level assessment tests (LLAs) were conducted in 20 schools. But only 20 % student performed well and others were below average highlighting the need for not only improving the enrollment in schools but also quality of education.
7 para-teachers were provided to improve teacher-student ratio in those schools. In these 7-villlages there was a 66% re-enrollment compared to 46% re-enrollment in other villages, mostly due to active participation of the para-teachers in engaging parents, children and the community.
Teaching materials were given to 18 schools
In 18 schools Child Rights Club meetings (Bal Sansad) were conducted almost every month. In these meetings children discussed about child rights, teacher attendance, mid-day meal and other issues concerning their schools,
Regular village community meetings were conducted with 25-30 participants on an average. Importance of sending children to schools regularly, exempting kids from household chores, interaction with the teachers enquiring progress of their children have been stressed in these meetings. ILP and Chetna Vikas teams continued to advocate that the responsibility of educating the next generation must be a community owned process.
In 8 schools, School monitoring committees (SMCs) were meeting regularly. In other schools, meetings were facilitated by ILP/Partner team members. On an average 8-10 members attended the meetings.

ILP strongly believes that sustained change can be brought in only when the community is educated, energized and empowered to take the responsibility of their schools. We realize that this process does not happen overnight, but we are committed to bringing about this change over a period of a few years. We are very thankful to our Global Giving donors who believe in this philosophy and are continuing to support us. THANK YOU!

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