Educate 200 Children Near Ranthambore, India

The New Year was the advent of the COVID-19 global pandemic that has affected the whole world and Sawai Madhopur is no exception. With countries going into lockdown India witnessed the secondary effects of the pandemic including widespread reverse migration, starvation and rising unemployment. Even though the pandemic has had a lasting effect on everyone irrespective of the nationality, religion, gender, caste and class, the most affected were the vulnerable and marginalized communities. 

During the lockdown, we witnessed as many walked home from the faraway cities that they worked at including Jaipur and as villages and hamlets were shut off from access to basic facilities and food. Even after the lockdown was relaxed we watched as many were still unemployed and not able to ensure food security for their families. 

We have had a challenging time with the situation of communities and the hit that education has taken. Read to know more on the updates of the work we have done this quarter through the difficultimes. 

Virtual Connect and Capacity building

With the introduction of the computer programme the teachers and students regularly worked on learning the use of the technology available to them. This learning has helped especially during the lockdown. As the teachers sit at home, they use phones, laptops and tabs to continue their capacity building. The teachers have kept in touch with each other and the community with the help of messages and other virtual platforms. They have used various online video conferencing apps to continue their workshops and capacity building, subject wise and project wise through discussions, interactions, readings etc. Our teachers are also spending time in understanding the philosophy of Education and thinking of the ways to implement it in today’s context.

The teachers have also participated in various webinars by specialists on various topics to improve their understanding of the current scenario under the lens of Gender, Education, and Development.

“Never stop learning, because life never stops teaching.”

Updates from the schools

During the lockdown, the teachers continued to build their capacity and keep in touch with the community. During communications with parents and students, the main issue that rose was the fact that not all families had phones and therefore not everybody could be contacted. We are in the process of creating solutions for this particular issue. Through whats app groups lesson plans, Teaching/learning materials and videos to explain certain lessons, the students continue to be exposed to their studies. Parents were asked to provide the phone to their children for a certain time of the day to continue their learning process. The parents were also asked to take care of the basic hygiene and health habits of their children and to keep a check on their daily school work. 

As the lockdown regulations relaxed the teachers visited each village to understand the current situation of the family and check on the learning levels and activities of the students. They also wanted to ensure that the parents and children are aware of the basic precautionary measures to be maintained for COVID-19. 

Community discussions:

Once the lockdown was relaxed in the country, our team had decided to visit the communities 2 times every week to cover the houses of all students in the vicinity of the 3 Uday Community Schools. These visits are to understand the issues faced by the community. The topics that our team concentrate on include

-        New possible enrolments for the new academic year

-        Possible dropouts and how to prevent the same

-        Progress of children according to lesson plans

-        Awareness on the pandemic and the precautionary measure that has to be taken

-        Any other issues that the community is facing or want to discuss

Uday Community School Fariya has decided to ensure that only 33% of the teachers will be working in the field with precautions at any given time to ensure reduced exposure.

Uday Community School Jaganpura shares that they will have many new enrolments this year to bring the number of students at the school to be around 115 students for the academic Year of 2020-21.

Uday Community School Girirajpura shares that the children and their parents are eager to go to school.

While teachers communicate with the community many parents and students are worried about the schools. Many ask about when the schools will reopen. Parents worry as they think that their children will be left behind in the times of online education. The team is working on a plan to ensure that the students are being provided with the quality child-centric education that we provide. 

Community Aid during COVID-19

At the end of the month, our team decided to visit the vulnerable and disadvantaged communities to conduct a survey for identifying families that require immediate aid. Team members visited vulnerable communities including:

-        Street doll performers who depend on daily wage work.

-        Disabled members of the community

-        Senior citizens

-        Daily wage workers and migrants etc.

As the country went into a lockdown the villages and hamlets in Sawai Madhopur was cut off from any other sources of ration. Most families were consumed by hunger. Many farmers who don’t have storage capacity had to either refrain from harvesting or had to just leave their harvest in their fields. In both cases, it is causing severe damage to their produce and ultimately to their income. Even with the relief package announced by the government, it hasn’t proved to be sufficient especially for large families and for families with no ration cards. Therefore these vulnerable families have to rely on their neighbours or relatives to provide them with the necessary grocery or feed them. In such times we decided to provide immediate relief in the form of dry ration kits. 

Ration kits were distributed to over 1700 families across 21 villages according to a survey of vulnerable communities conducted by our team. These ration kits were distributed in two phases in the month of May and June. The volunteers also followed all the precautionary and safety measures to be taken. The organization will continue to reach out for support to help the community in these dire times including the other 800 families that were identified to need immediate aid. 

As there are various myths related to COVID which is negatively affecting the communities especially the vulnerable ones, we are also working to raise awareness around COVID and providing correct information to the communities regarding basic health, hygiene and sanitation

We also conducted a sample survey of the community to determine the current condition of the community.

Note: This is an ongoing research but we would like to share some of the findings of the survey through this report.

Research Methodology: Our population for the research is the identified households for humanitarian aid. Out of the population size of 998, our sample size was 226. The Stratified Convenient sampling was done to identify the households to be surveyed in each of the village communities. Each family can range from 1 to 12 members and the result showed that the average number of family members was 5.

Occupation:

The main occupation of the community was determined by 213 respondents of the sample survey.

The main occupation of the communities in the district of Sawai Madhopur (According to the sample survey conducted):

Other occupation includes:

- Labour - 66.2 %

- Farming - 0.9 %

- Kabbadi - 7.4 %

- Black Smith - 12.5 %

- Other - 13 % 

Other occupations include:  Making Bamboo baskets, Vegetable vendors, Selling Khadi, Making Glass articles, Pension, Begging, Watch Vendor

Even after the lockdown was relaxed 93.4% members of the community were unemployed. 

Note: 31% of the respondents are daily wage workers. On an average 1 to 2 members of each family has an occupation. 8 out of 213 individuals have a job during the lockdown even though 65% of the respondents (213) have a MGNREGA Job card.

Salary:

With no main occupation, the communities have no money or savings to provide for their families. The Graph below is determined by the data of 213 respondents. (78% have no income at all after the lockdown began)

These are a few stories and struggles of community members that we were able to reach out to:

No way other than walking

Latoor ji is from the Pawandi village in Khandar Sawai Madhopur and used to work as a labourer in Jaipur.

"Once the lockdown began work stopped and I had to come home. As there was no other way, I walked home and used all my money on coming back. Once I got here I realized that there was no work I could get here either. We do not have food and we do not have a job. We are cornered from all 4 sides. We haven't gotten help from any other source other than the ration kits we got from GSK and we are thankful for the help. We will be able to manage food for the next month at least."

The music has stopped playing

Small groups from the Raikheda (Bhopa) community are street performers (Sarangi Vaad) and have been drastically affected due to the lockdown.

"We are a community that has very little land and depend on street performances (playing the Sarangi) in villages to make a livelihood and food. We earn our daily wages through these performances. After the lockdown began we have not been able to step into the community. The villagers say "You cannot come into the village; it is people like you who spread the virus." We do not even have money to buy our own salt. It has been a hard time and the Government has not helped us other than providing some Dal and oil. We just pray for the pandemic to stop so that we can survive." The Bhopa community faces new discrimination and struggles in the coming time. The community was relieved to have gotten ration kits from GSK and hope for the pandemic to end.

Work with DNT communities

Gramin Shiksha Kendra is looking forward to design a suitable intervention with the 5 identified and most vulnerable communities based in Sawai Madhopur. These communties are -

• Bhopa
• Kanjar
• Gadiya Lauhar
• Bawariya
• Mogiya

Simultaneously, we intend to provide support to the remaining 800 households which we identified. We are currently making efforts to raise funds to attain this goal. We are also working closely with the district administration to ensure that the food requirements of these households are met through PDS and other existing government schemes.

Assessment- The challenge of English.

English is a language that is a work in progress and so are the teachers in learning the language. As the lockdown continued in May the teachers continued their capacity building, which was hard considering the current condition of the pandemic. A subject-wise strategic plan was shared with the teachers. The plan for English comprised resources to be read and shared online with the group. The plan was designed to incorporate the gaps in their learning and aspirations of English teachers and to enhance the teachers reading, writing and comprehension of a passage, grammatical understanding, self-expression and knowledge on the National Policy of education.

With the capacity building, two sets of assessment paper for primary and upper primary teachers were prepared. These were shared with the teachers and the range of performance was recorded between 76% to 92%.

"As Kim Collins says it is important to strive for continuous improvement instead of perfection."

Plans for the unforeseen future

There is uncertainty about the form that education and social norms will take in the coming time. Even with the uncertainty and difficulties in predicting the future our team put their minds together to come up with an action plan to continue our work at the school, community and the education system. The approach was determined through multiple discussions on zoom calls. We have succeeded in writing approach papers for the following:

-        Operations

-        Health, Hygiene and Sanitation

-        Curriculum

-        Pedagogy

-        Content Creation

-        Inclusive Education

-        Engagement with the community

-        STEAM Laboratory and our work with the government schools.

The approach paper is based on the possibility of the schools being closed and reopened. We have also started executing a few of the plans that were decided including

-        Whats app groups created with students to share lesson plans and videos.

-        Community visits to understand the conditions of the students (learning levels) and parents.

-        Cleaning of schools and maintenance of school facilities.

-        Creating Lesson Plans and sharing it with students.

-        Creating awareness of the pandemic and precautionary measures to be taken by the community.

We are planning to improve the approach of education for the students of Uday Community School. 

The current pandemic has shaken the core of every sector. We at Gramin Shiksha Kendra are concerned about the massive effect that this will have in the education sector with the secondary effects of the pandemic including:

1. High dropout rates,
2. Possible increase in child labour to meet the needs of the family
3. Gender inequality to meet the dire needs of the family
4. The decline in learning levels of students
5. The decline in the quality of education provided

This will take the education system in the country backwards by many years.

To tackle with the issue of the pandemic we are working with the community and students to ensure that there is an understanding on the importance of education for them in the long run through meetings with parents, students and SMC members. We ensure to keep the students engaged even during a shutdown of schools through virtual platforms and check their progress through conversations with parents.

We are going to strive to provide education for our children in Sawai Madhopur and try to help the community in their immediate needs in this crisis. As the country is still in the shackles of the pandemic we will not let it be the reason for education to stop. We wish and hope that you and your family are safe and healthy in the worrying conditions of the pandemic.

Stay Safe

Thank You

Sincerely

Team: Gramin Shiksha Kendra

Links:

• GSK Website: Find out more and become a part of our journey

Every New Year is like a new book with empty pages ready to be filled with experiences, challenges and memories. We wish you and your family a very Happy New year. We are ready to fill our books with new stories of the schools and we are hopeful of sharing these stories with you soon as well.

With the end of a long and challenging year and a begining of a new one the Uday Community School Jaganpura has been taking up new challenges, celebrating education and strive to improve the experience of the students at the school. Continue reading to know more. 

Winter Workshop

Winter Workshop from 26^th December – 4^th January was conducted for the capacity building of the teachers. This workshop was focused on improving the current plans and creating a plan for the New Year. The teachers worked on their own subjects. The team worked on building their own knowledge on current affairs, creating new projects for each school and improving the current method of teaching at each of the schools.

Introduction to sexuality education

With the usual activities of the winter workshop the teachers had a new session on sexuality education this time. The organization plans to introduce sexuality education and hygiene to the students as well as the community. The first step is to make the teachers aware. As the direct and active involvement of the teachers with the students and the community is what has helped in creating the education system that we have strived for, it is only right to begin with them.

 The interactive session was concentrating on understanding the importance of sexuality education and the basic discussion of various topics such as gender role, effect of society and culture on sexuality and the teachers understanding on equality. The first discussion began during the winter workshop and has continued with each school since then. The teachers at Jaganpura like the other schools have a healthy discussion on sexuality education on a regular basis to ensure to improve on their knowledge on various topics involved. 

Republic Day!

On the anniversary of the day India became a republic, the day the constitution came into effect, the country celebrates with parades, school functions, marches by children of all ages. In the 3 tiny schools of Uday Samudayik Patshala at Jaganpura the day was conducted with expressive programmes, a tinge of patriotism, collective participation and a lot of enjoyment which was shared with the community.

The school ensured that each student was given the stage for a performance. With small but confident strides the children approached the stage in turns to give the audience the best performance of their life. They shed their fears, inhibitions and their hesitation as they took the stage.

 A sense of pride and joy filled the eyes of every parent after they saw their child’s excited and dedicated performance. They encouraged the students and contributed to the school. The day ended by distributing ladoos to all the students, parents and teachers.

As the day came to an end it was clear that the day of celebration had left the children and the parent’s content. The cheerful faces of the teachers also expressed the satisfaction and the success of the programme. The clubs, co scholastic activities, creative writing, reciting poems and stories and the activities in the assemblies had assisted in many ways to create beautiful performances on Republic Day including dances, poem recitals, theatre performance and speeches. 

Preparation for Science Exhibition (Vistaar)

As a part of community awareness and the outreach programme to the schools the Vistaar teachers decided to conduct science exhibitions at the various schools that they cater to. The exhibition was held to:

1. Boost the participation, confidence and exposure of the children
2. Invite and share the work done at the schools with the community
3. Give an example to the government school on methodologies that can be used to increase student and community participation
4. To celebrate education by sharing it.

The teachers decided to conduct the exhibitions in the month of February. Hence preparations began. Children and teachers began making models and creating charts sheets to represent their work. Community field staff of Uday School Jaganpura went visited all the communities to invite parents, SMC (school management committees) members and community members. “The attendance of the children has increased in hearing about the exhibition as they want to take part. This has never happened before.” The science teacher at Uliyana Government school mentioned. 

The kids are excited to present their work to their families, communities, teachers and other officials. Mr. Bhola Shankar, the Vistaar teachers of the areas around Uday School Jaganpura conducted the exhibition at 5 schools in the area namely: Uliyana, Jamulkheda, Kutalpura Maliyan, Ramsinghpura, Khandoj. 

The school development plan and annual project

With a new year beginning all the schools worked on a specific project with a theme and a yearly plan for the year 2020. Jaganpura took up Holi as their topic and have started working on the same. The project plan includes the basic design of the topic selected and is divided according to the level of the students grade, the interlinking of the project with the topics being taken in various subjects and the existing context of the schools.

The yearly plan for 2020 was based on the reflection of the past quarter and the year to understand the interventions and modifications that are required. These plans include subject, community, school premises, health, hygiene nutrition, curriculum, community interactions etc. The teachers and community staff discuss together and make changes to existing plans and create new ones to improve the education system.

English (It’s Important)

Even though English is the official language of our country there has always been the question of the usability of the language, especially in rural areas. Until recently English was taught as a subject from th 6^th grade. This restricted the possibilities of the students in many ways. It is true that English is not a language that is used for conversation in rural areas but it is important to remember that it is the language used for official documents and it is also the language used for professional purposes. Therefore it is important to give everyone equal opportunities by teaching them English from the beginning.

Uday School does not want to place any boundaries on their students and hopes that each one reaches the goal that they would like to achieve. The School hopes that learning English will not be hurdle for the students in the future and therefore the students are exposed to the subject from the beginning of their schooling. They are introduced to the English words used to describe their day to day life.

One thing that we all know is that a language can only be learnt with practice and use of the language. Therefore the teachers encourage the students to read and discuss the their writing, the children are taught poems and are also encouraged to write their own poems in English. This ensures to create a platform where the children are exposed to using the language on a daily basis. This also encourages students who are hesitant to try talking in English.

At Jaganpura the students are encouraged to write stories, poems and experiences in english and discuss the same in class. The teachers also continue to conduct English learning workshops on a weekly basis to practice and improve their own knowledge on English.

The Year has begun with many celebrations, challenges and experiences. 

With the beginning of a new month we look forward to many new events and experiences with the students and the parents. We are excited to share these with you. We would like to thank you for all the support.

Team

Gramin Shiksha Kendra