Vol. 2, No. 11 | November 2006

Julia Fletcher once said "Little drops of water, little grains of sand, Make the mighty ocean and the pleasant land" Such a succint way to say so much. This edition of Xpressions talks of small efforts made by some to provide significant opportunities, translating into great results. Indu Reddy, a XI grade student, approached her club to make contributions to Vibha to support its projects for underprivileged children. Sikshana, our project profile for the month, decided to take on government schools, but in a collaborative way with small yet decisive changes in the medium and quality of instruction The optimist in me believes that giving is a natural stimulus and that all of us experience the urge to give. Indu says that if every American citizen pledged a $1 we would have millions. So what stops us? Could it be the feeling that, "How can I as a singular entity effect any change whatsoever"? We hope this edition of Xpressions serves to provide you with food for thought. Our profiles showcase humble efforts that have pioneered a tidal wave of change. Think about it - your efforts might not change the world in one fell swoop, but will definitely impact atleast one life.

Happy holidays to our patrons and best wishes for a brilliant New Year.

Thoughts from our youth volunteer...

Indu Reddy
11th grade

Mahatma Gandhi once said, “Be the change you want to see in the world.” This simple statement holds far more wisdom than can be accounted for. It is a rule by which to live your life, a melody in itself.

However, this tune fails to entice teenagers all over the nation and the world whose greatest fear is getting their math test back, and most recent thought about their new earrings and jeans. The world revolves solely around themselves. I used to be a part of that growing population.

Yesterday, I woke up to the ringing of my alarm in my queen-sized bed. I brushed with my electronic toothbrush and changed into my new jeans that I bought over the weekend. After going downstairs and pouring my cereal while my mom watched the stock market on CNBC, I sat down to finish my English homework. In 10 minutes, my sister rushed downstairs having gotten late studying for a physics exam. Within a second, we were all in the Lexus, driving to school.

No matter how good life treats you, there is always something to complain about. I went downstairs to a perfect home for 16 years of my life, taking everything for granted. When I learned about Vibha from my aunt, it opened my eyes completely to a world I had never taken the time to apprehend.

While millions of children strive to stay alive, there are a million more teenagers who know nothing about it. However this has to change. It is imperative that the youth of this generation take action, cooperating in organizations like Vibha. We are the future. If we do not act now, who will 20 years later?

Every Thursday, at Granada Hills Charter High School, the Desi Club holds a meeting. When I heard about Vibha over summer, I thought it was a perfect opportunity to get others involved. As an officer of the club, I started the first meeting with news of Vibha, not knowing how this crowd of uninterested teenagers would react. At the mention of less-fortunate children receiving health care and education, the support for the organization was overwhelming. Half the Desi Club members participated in the Vibha LA Walk on October 1, 2006. It is essential for them to know that they alone can make a difference in someone’s life.

If the state of these impoverished children is going to change, then it is time to unite. If one dollar came from every American resident, $ 295,734,134 would be contributed to the organization.

93% of Sahariya children are victims of severe malnourishment while 15% are on the brink of death because of it. Alter this course: be the change you want to see in the world.

Write To Us...

Your feedback is important to us. Vibha welcomes any comments, suggestions or questions you may have about our projects, programs, products, monitoring etc. If you are particularly interested in a topic and would like to see Vibha showcase it please let us know.

Fundraising 2006 Update

This year, through fund-raisers and direct donations, Vibha has raised close to $400,000. Our target however, is $600,000. We need your help to enable us to meet our goal. Please make your year-end tax-exempt donations to Vibha. We are currently supporting more than 40 projects in India and have disbursed close to $350,000 this year. With your help, together, we can scale even greater heights. Donate NOW!

Project Profile

Sikshana,
Karnataka

As Francis Bacon put it succinctly “Knowledge is Power”. It is with this motto that this edition of Xpressions covers Sikshana – Sikshana is a model of intervention in government schools in India aiming to improve the quality of primary education. It is one of the main projects of the Sivasri Charitable Trust

Genesis: The seed of the organization was sown by Mr. Rammurthy, a well settled engineer who having enjoyed a long and successful career decided, at retirement, to do something about his interest in the field of education for underprivileged children. He pulled in two more likeminded people and formed Sivasri Charitable Trust in 2001. This ‘think tank’ of three trustees studied existing and past initiatives of the Karnataka State Government and the State Council for Education, Research and Training. They also evaluated work being done by NCERT at the national level and supplemented this with models of alternative education, parallel institutions, non-formal education, and remedial support initiated by other volunteer agencies. Based this analysis the team decided that intervention in government schools would produce the maximum impact to education at the grass root level. Given this, Sikshana evolved in Nov, 2001. It started with the question “What causes a government school student to either not perform or to drop out altogether?” Informal visits to government primary schools and casual interactions with school staff and children yielded visible weaknesses in basic infrastructure, teacher/student ratio, staff attitude and teaching methodology. Factors like poverty, conservative cultural backgrounds and a disruptive home atmosphere also added to the governments’ woes. Sikshana evolved to plug loopholes and to find answers to these questions.

Methodology: InitiallySikshana decided to work with 5 primary government schools close to Mr. Rammurthy’s residence. Under the voluntary agency for public-private partnership scheme of the Government of Karnataka, the official adoption of these schools was done through a MOU between the trust and the government.

Before commencing on a strategic plan of action for each school, a mapping exercise was conducted by Sikshana where each school was put on scale of 0 -100. While this exercise revealed what was lacking in terms of infrastructure, teaching materials and teacher/student ratio it could not help in understanding attitude and capacity of the teachers or for that matter the learning levels of the children.

It was then decided to enlist volunteers. Sikshana, fortunately, was able to attract a set of young and enthusiastic volunteers with good educational backgrounds and hence was able to leverage them to understand the needs of the children and the methodology of intervention.

Illustration - Chikkakalasandra government lower primary school: Adopted in 2001, the school is a one storey building recently cleaned, painted and decorated with plants to make the atmosphere neat and pleasant. Currently it has 210 children studying in the 1st to 5th grades.

Before Sikshana:	After Sikshana:

Issues faced

Intervention by Sikshana

Basic Infrastructure :

The school had only 3 cramped but functional rooms on the ground floor accommodating 5 grades.
There was no power supply.
The approach road was narrow and very dirty.
The washroom as well was in a very bad shape

Sikshana constructed a room on the school roof with a staircase and a storage corner. The room is big enough to run a 4th grade class and store school equipments/materials in a corner.
Power supply arranged. Fans and tube-lights are put up and the teachers are in charge of use of the electricity.
The building is cleaned; white washed and decorated with plants every summer vacation. The approach lane and the outside area are cleaned to make use of it for prayers, physical exercise or any group activities.
The washroom has been repaired and water supply arranged

Mid-day meal:

Under the government mid-day meal scheme, each child gets certain quota of rice at the end of the month.

Sikshana convinced the government authority to supply the total monthly quota in advance to be stored at the school.
A cook is employed to cook a variety of rice dishes and supply to the school. The cooking place is at the distance of 3-4 km from the school. The vessels and plates are given by the government.
The children sit in rows to eat and are trained to keep their shoes away from the eating place, wash their hands, stand in a queue without pushing each other, keep the used plates in a decided place, wash the hands at the end of the meal and play for a while outside the school till the classrooms are cleaned again for study.
Initially, there was shortage of 100 plates due to which, some children would wait till the others finished. Sikshana not just provided 100 plates but also provided for the cost of the additional ingredients, cooking fuel, salary of the cook and cost of transporting the food to the school.
These measures have kept the children healthy and have increased the average attendance.

Teachers/students ratio :

Four teachers including the headmaster for five grades.

Sikshana deployed one full time teacher who takes the 1 st grade class. This arrangement has eased the burden on the government teachers and has given the headmaster time to look after the management of the school.

Attitude of the government staff :

Indifference of the school staff was the main factor affecting the atmosphere in the school.

Using his own contacts, Mr. Rammurthy, organizes a one day motivational workshop by the ‘ Institute of Quality’ (part of the Configuration of Indian Industries) every year for the all teachers in the Sikshana projects.
Additionally personality and team building activities are also carried out. Teachers’ rock climb, follow nature trails etc. These activities give them a good break from the school routine and are thrilling and rejuvenating.

Day to day teaching-learning activities:

Due to a lack of storage facilities the teaching aids provided by the government were found to be unusable. The teachers were also not given enough input to make use of them effectively and some of them were not appropriate according to the subjects.

Sikshana has put lot of effort into this area with help of volunteers. All available teaching aids were sorted out according to their usage for particular grade.
Storage facilities were provided in each classroom to store and display.
On daily basis, reading of newspapers, dictations of new words are introduced.
Portions of the walls are painted with black so that the children could practice math sums, tables, list of words etc. on them.

Library:

The government gives Rs.500/- per year to the school to invest in reading materials for the children. This however is not adequate at all.

Sikshana invested in setting up a library for the children. Here, the children are motivated to spend 5-6 hours to select the books on their own.
Children borrow the books for a week. To encourage the reading habits, on the day of return of the book, the child is expected to talk about what he/she has read in front of the class. The other children who have read the book are encouraged to ask questions and discuss the core theme of the story. This, according to a 2 nd grade teacher, has increased the reading and conversation skills of the children.

Day to day supervision, monitoring and’ performance assessment:

Though the government has MLL – Minimum Learning Levels expected to be achieved at the end of the academic year; they went unobserved by the government teachers.

In addition to monthly tests, Sikshana adopted the Azim Premji Foundation model for performance assessment
With the help of the volunteers and an external evaluator, the assessment of each child is conducted thrice at the interval of 4 months. Each assessment contains worksheets which the child is supposed to fill and submit in a certain time period. Marks are awarded and the average performance of a class is used to determine the areas of weakness.
Teachers are expected to work out their plan of action on the class wall as a reminder and to maintain the decided timeline.

Encouragement to the children:

There was nothing in the school system to encourage good performance and involve the parents in their child’s education.

Monthly Spot Prizes and scholarships are given to the three top performers of each school till he/she passes 10 th grade.
Sikshana Level Meets are organized where selected children are taken to other cities, historical places etc.
Due to these activities, parents have started visiting schools and using this opportunity, Sikshana now organizes the parents’ meetings every two months.

Vibha’s role: Vibha has funded several portions of the Sikshana project and is in discussions with management on future funding opportunities. Sikshana in addition to being efficiently run also displays professionalism. This makes it one of Vibha premier projects.

If you would like more information on Sikshana please contact us at projects@vibha.org.

Vibha 1030 E El Camino Real, #424 Sunnyvale, CA 94087
Phone: 408-997-9992 | Fax: 775-593-1061

Vibha Main Page | Newletters Home (Previous editions) | Donate Online

Vibha is a 501(c)(3) registered non-profit, non-religious, non-political organization that seeks to restore to underprivileged children their basic rights to food, shelter, health and education - in short, a future.
All donations to Vibha are tax exempt in the US.