Providing Functional Literacy to Women in India

  Dhanpatmal Virmani Education Trust and Management Society , Roop Nagar, Delhi-07 

                  Providing Functional Literacy to women in India (1784)" 

             A Quarterly Progress Report ending September 2010.

   The trust runs 50 Adult Literacy centers in and around Delhi. Since its inception, So far 3587 women, 32 men and 596 children have already studied. Presently 880 women and 12 young men are regularly attending learning centers as well as vocational training centers. 364 women have successfully completed their program in June 2010. Only eight women dropped out from the program. Presently twelve women are learning alphabets, one forty fives are on words formation, one ninety nine are in sentence reading & writing position, one sixty six are in paragraph and twenty five in story reading and writing label. This is a great achievement for us because during the base line test they were at Zero level. After joining our program within six months they had become literate.                                                                                                                                               

                                                                                                                                                                                                                  We have organized three training programs for staff members. We have an in house resource person to deliver the training component. 53 staff members attended the same. Monthly cluster training program on specific issues related to subject hard spots, women and girls counseling, community sensitization & other issues’ was organized   in our adult literacy centers.

Celebration: We celebrated all the festivals at our learning centers. During the period we celebrated Independence day ( 15^th August )  Raksha bandhan ( Festival for brother & sister ) in which sister ties a knot called Raksha sutra on the wrist of her brother for his welfare , world literacy day &  Hindi weeks."

Jyoti, A Motivation for others

Case Study:  Jyoti (16 year old) belongs to a very poor family. She lives in 38F saraifoos  Mohalla near Tis hazari. She is orphan & lives with her Grandparents. Her family does not have faith in educating the girl child .So she was never gone to school .But DVET intervention, regular home visit and counseling   by center in charge changed her family’s approach about the girl education. Adult literacy project have changed the mindset of the family .They understood the importance of education in life as not just being a means of earning but as a tool to regulate an individual’s life effectively. The family agreed to enroll jyoti in our center at tis hazari centre .Gradually, she has turned into a regular and bright student of the center. She was very excited about her enrollment in class III in government Sarvodaya School, which happened in the month of July 2010. A most motivating fact is that Jyoti has not only done very well, but has also motivated three other girls to join the E-Literacy Programme.

  We would also like  to receive a feed back from you about what you think about our Adult Literacy Program, and how we might improve on it. We value your concerns and insight on how the benefits of literacy might be disseminated further.

We thank you for your co operation!