Educate & empower 3,600 kids in Jharkhand, India

Progress during Apr 2012-July2012:

• Attendance in the 16 pre-schools that we activated continues to be the same as the previous quarter at around 75% reflecting sustained interest levels.
• Six Mothers Committee capacity building training sessions were held across 6 villages to augment the initial orientation provided during the previous academic year. 164 members attended the sessions. In addition to aspects related to education, VHSNC's (Village health Sanitation Committee) role in promoting immunization to curb neo-natal death, schemes run by the Health Department like free nutritious food served at pre-schools were discussed in these meetings.
• 22 childeren have been re-enrolled in April-July time period. In summary 153 students out of 371 out-of-school children have be re-enrolled so far.
• 20 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.
• 12 out of scheduled 18 School Monitoring Committee (SMC) meetings were held and attended by 213 members. These meetings were facilitated by ILP/Partner team members.
• Four Gram Panchayat level capacity building meetings were conducted in 4 panchayats covering 16 villages and attended by 174 members. The  responsibilities of SMC members were shared and we stressed the necessity of the Gram Panchayat’s involvement in planning, implementing and monitoring of the school-related programs to achive 100% literacy rate in the area.
• Eleven Child Rights Club meetings (Bal Sansad) meetings were organized across 11 villages. 189 kids attended and were taught parliamentary democracy processes, rule of law and power of fair ballot.
• 2 additional para teachers have been recruited to offset the poor teacher student ratio in the schools.

• While progress is definitely being made, there is still much to be done as witnessed in the results of the Learning Level Assessment that was conducted for 669 children from Grade III to Grade VIII: Nearly half of the children achieved scores less than 50%, and only 5% of the students scored above 85%.

We look forward to continued support from our current and more donors to positively transform this backward region. THANK YOU!