Open Kindergarten Centres in 40 villages in 2013

Dear friends,

Thank you for your generosity and support for the GlobalGiving Open Winter challenge 2011. We now have a presence on GlobalGiving and will be posting our future projects and updates on our projects.  We were able to raise 5400$ through the challenge, so we are closer to our goal of reaching quality education to 100 more villages in Karnataka, India in June 2012.

The goal:  

Each of these 100 villages will have a Kindergarten Centre and an after- school Primary Education Centre. Having both Centres in every village gives a child the opportunity to go through 5 to 6 years of continuous learning in our Centres. In 2012-2013, we will continue to be in the 2 Districts where we have begun, Mandya and Davangere in Karnataka, where we already have 65 Centres running. This will give us a deeper penetration into these districts and in the long run impact more meaningfully the educational levels in this region.

The progress so far:

To support the addition of 200 more Teachers to run the Kindergarten and Primary Education Centres, we began in January by recruiting the field team of 11 Cluster managers (CMs) and 5 Coordinators. Together they will monitor and support the teachers at the Centres on all aspects of the program and ensure the smooth functioning of the Centres. The new team started their training on February 5^th and will continue in training till mid march.  As part of their work, they have already done the market survey and identified potential villages to start new Centres.

Marketing is underway to recruit Teachers and applications are already coming in. Tests will be conducted later this month and by end March we will interview between 500 to a 1000 young aspiring Teachers before we make our final selection. The Teachers will start their training by April.

Status of existing Centres: Our current 65 Centres are coming to the close of their first year by March 2012. It has been validating to see our model work- children are learning and enjoying learning using diverse materials, an opportunity they have not had in the villages so far. Teachers have grown in stature both in their homes as earning women and valuable people in their communities.

LEGO Foundation has come in as a partner, every centre now has LEGO materials and besides play, our teachers have been trained to use LEGO for teaching. Our midterm assessments in November 2011 indicate that children are improving in the 3 subjects taught-Math, English and Kannada. Final assessments will be done in March. Parents are delighted that their children are learning, doing better in schools and able to speak in English with comfort. Parents also report improvement in behavior, confidence and social skills of their children and an eagerness to attend our Centres.

It has been an immensely satisfying year to watch our Centres  bringing good quality education to children in rural India and to see the young local women we have selected and trained, grow into efficient Teachers. It has been challenging too as we addressed the many issues in the field and set standards and policies for the long term.  We are looking ahead with much excitement to June 2012 as we expand to another 100 villages.

Thank you once again for your support! Do continue to spread the word to your friends and colleagues.

Sincerely yours,

Lily Paul

Director: Community Development

Hippocampus Learning Centres