Reducing school drop outs in rural India

Gender segregated group counselling and individual counselling was provided to students of class V in select project schools. A specific need for counselling for these children was raised by teachers owing to the declining levels of discipline among the boys of the class. A counselling session was organised for these children. The counsellor addressed the issue of discipline and good behaviour for the boys; and provided awareness to the girls about sexual abuse and how to protect themselves in such situations.

Handwriting competitions in English and Tamil were conducted class-wise for all students in project schools. Printed texts were provided and the students were asked to copy the texts in their best handwriting onto a sheet of paper in the given time of 45 minutes for each language. One prize and one consolation prize per language were given to the students with the best handwriting in each of the classes. The winners were chosen on the basis of good handwriting, clarity, neatness, spacing and least mistakes (spelling and punctuation). The prizes for the same were distributed.  Individual feedback was also provided to the students and teachers about improvements that can be made. The teachers expressed their happiness and gratitude for having conducted such a competition.

Three-day summer camps were conducted in some project schools. The key objective and goal of summer camp was to bring out the latent talents of the children and to teach them new forms of arts and crafts, and other extra-curricular activities. The camp were held in April for students of classes III & IV, and nearly 100 students participated. The children were divided into teams of three and were asked to remain in those teams till the end of the camp. On all three days of the summer camp at each of the schools, the day started with games for the children and was followed by arts and crafts and dance. Fun games were conducted at regular intervals in order to ensure that the children’s energy levels do not dip. Refreshments were given twice in order to keep the energy levels up in the face of the summer heat. On the concluding day, all the participants were given a gift as token of appreciation for having attended the camp. All the artwork and craftwork has been collected and stored, and shall be given to the students only after it is displayed in an exhibition after school reopens.

Thanks to all donors for their generous contributions.