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It is September, and 50 million children all across the U.S. start their school year. Toting backpacks and lunch bags, these children, in most cases, go to well equipped classrooms with trained teachers. However, it is sobering to note that more than twice that number – a 100 million children worldwide – will not have access to any form of schooling. Grinding poverty and unsafe conditions in urban slums and war-torn regions make it difficult for some others to reach school. Even after they get to school, education is far from being a certainty. Lack of teachers and teaching materials contribute to poor educational quality. In this newsletter, we showcase Vibha projects that promise to provide education to the youngest learners. Vidyarambam educates pre-primary children. Verala, Rachana and SVVPS provide non-formal education for children with the intention of preparing them for main-stream schooling. As always, we thank you, our patrons, for helping organizations such as these, bring the hope of an education to these children. Each of us is a lit candle. We lose nothing by helping to light more candles and making this world brighter for all of us! |
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Capacity Building - Case StudiesNetworking projects to increase their capacity and effectiveness: Two case studies Vibha’s relationship with a project only begins when it is approved for funding. The relationship with a project is actively fostered through project visits, monitoring, and reports from the projects, to ensure that the project is having the desired impact on the target beneficiaries. At a basic level, this is as simple as establishing that the project - be it a school or a shelter or a day care - is functioning and delivering the services it set out to provide. This is easily done through visits to the projects by volunteers, patrons and professionals. At the next level, the impact of the project on the children is studied using various quantitative and qualitative measures. Are more students attending school? Are they learning better? Is the school an enriching experience for them? Are there fewer drop-outs? Are the teachers enthusiastic and motivated to teach? The two case studies presented here portray projects that set out to satisfy a very specific need in the communities they serve. However, visits by Vibha project monitoring personnel revealed that additional input by experts in the field could enhance the overall performance of the project. Fortunately, both the projects were keen on accepting a helping hand to remedy their problem areas and improve project performance. Vibha networked each of these projects with another resource organization that could share its expertise and thus helped the project bring its efforts to fruition. Case 1: Rachana’s training of Verala teachers: Verala Development Society runs non-formal education centers in the area around Kolhapur, Maharastra with the aim of preparing out-of-school migrant children to join 5 th grade as early as possible. The services are provided through the Education Guarantee Scheme (EGS) of the Maharashtra government for children who cannot attend regular schools. Vibha funds supplement the government funds which fell far short of what was required to run the centers. At the start of Vibha funding there were 24 centers and 500 students. However, when the project was monitored in December 2004, there were only 15 centers serving around 280 children. A detailed look at the project revealed that this was due to ineffective coordination between centers, high turnover of children due to migration, no parent participation, absence of basic infrastructure and teaching materials, inadequately trained teaching staff and poor partnership with the government. But still, the project was in a position to provide education to children in a location where no other alternative was available. The management at Verala was open to suggestions for improvement.
Based on a joint action plan created by Vibha, the number of centers was scaled down to 11 sustainable centers, a new field coordinator was appointed, a mid-day meal component was introduced to motivate the children to attend school, regular staff meetings and parent meetings were set up and the frequency of project monitoring visits by Vibha was increased. However, the most intensive part of the intervention was the teacher training program. A two-day workshop to train Verala teachers was conducted in May 2005 by Rachana, another Vibha funded project. Rachana Society for Social Reconstruction provides a supportive education program in villages in Pune district, Maharastra. The aim of the project is to ensure that students attain their full age-appropriate potential in school by providing before and after-school classes that enrich their learning experience. Use of innovative teaching techniques and low-cost learning materials is key to Rachana’s success.
The workshop conducted by Rachana, taught the teachers at Verala how to make teaching-learning activities child-centric and interactive. The teachers learnt to prepare innovative teaching aids. They learnt strategies for involving parents and strengthening reading and writing skills. They also learnt to develop modules to evaluate and monitor the children’s performance and to plan to achieve targets set for them. The teaching methods emphasized the use of songs, stories, games, field trips, art and creative writing to maintain interest levels in the classroom. Follow-up visits were made in August 2005 and January 2006. The number of centers had decreased to 5 following damage to 2 centers by floods and Government closure of 4 other centers as alternate government-run primary schools became available. However the teachers and children in the centers that were still operational were found to be highly motivated. The centers were clean, drinking water was available, the walls were filled with colorful charts, maps and educational posters, and the children demonstrated a good grasp of the concepts. They enjoyed the snack served at the end of the school day and attendance had improved. Of the 93 children in attendance at the time of the visit, around 47 were ready for mainstreaming into regular schools. Plans are in place for a visit to Rachana centers by Verala teachers to get field exposure to fresh teaching ideas and see for themselves that with all these efforts it is possible to achieve the desired results. After intervention, it can certainly be said that Verala is making visible progress in effectively educating the children in its community. Case 2: Swanirvar’s training of SVVPS teachers: Swami Vivekananda Vani Prachar Samiti (SVVPS) provides formal and non-formal education for slum children in Durgapur, West Bengal. Operating out of 3 centers, the project serves 250 children by imparting education to pre-primary children and supportive coachin to school going children from 1 st to 10 th grade. Starting in July 2005, Vibha funds a large portion of the operating expenses of the 3 schools, including teacher salaries, books, stationery, snack and uniforms. While the SVVPS team was found to be extremely sincere, dedicated and hardworking, the need for tranining the teachers in daily classroom activities and in the preparation of low-cost teaching materials was felt. Vibha put SVVPS in touch with Swanirvar, a Kolkata based NGO. Swanirvar runs a teachers training center called SikshaMitra. Faculty from SikshaMitra visited SVVPS in May 2006 to formulate a training program and a 6 session program was planned.
The first session, conducted from 2 nd to 6 th July 2006 in Durgapur, focused on training pre-primary education. Four teachers from SikshaMitra trained 18 teachers from SVVPS in 12 hour sessions on 5 consecutive days. The training module focused on language acquisition, movement, self-care, social behavior, early math and story telling. The report received from SVVPS indicates the positive implementation of the learning from the training workshop.
The next session is tentatively scheduled for November 2006.
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Project ProfileVidyarambam
Vidyarambam: Vidyarambam – “The beginning of learning”, from “Vidya” meaning learning and “arambam” meaning the beginning is a trust set up by V. Ranganathan to provide free education for the pre-primary poor child in the 3-5yr age group in Tamilnadu. Genesis: On a pursuit to work for children’s education, the founder, visited the poorest districts in Tamilnadu and witnessed that children in villages equated school with a free lunch and carried, not books, but aluminum plates to schools in their bags. The passion to the cause got rooted to the suffering experienced by the poor illiterate village laborers. Then he decided to provide at least basic study material to the poor children free of cost and fix a tutor to teach them. As the team expanded, newer members implanted the idea of quality in education. They roped in a team of eminent educationists into the Advisory committee and formulated syllabus suiting the village environment and introduced many interesting, straightforward, simple and effective teaching aids. Today training programs are designed and provided for tutors and assessors and remedial courses are held for academically weak children from the 3 rd to 5 th grade.
Achievements: Having been registered on March 15, 2002 as a Public Trust, the Vidyarambam Trust has completed four years. To begin with, two centers with 27 children were started where Mr. Ranganathan himself used to teach. At present, there are 601 centers benefiting 11,654 children. These centers are located in remote villages of 13 out of 24 districts of Tamilnadu. Organization Structure
Vibha’s Role: Last year Vibha sponsored 45 centers from three districts.
If you would like more information on Vidyarambam please contact us at projects@vibha.org. 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.
Grant received from Triangle FoundationWe recently received a grant of $10,000 from Constella Group Giving Fund of Triangle Community Foundation. This was an effort started by Bina Phillip from Vibha's Atlanta Action Center. The grant will be allocated towards AURED (Mumbai) and Rajasthan Mahila Kalyan Mandal (Rajasthan) - two of the projects working in the field of healthcare and supported by Vibha. Vibha Walk/Run 2006 Vibha Walk/Run is a National Fundraiser that we organize to raise awareness and funds for child development projects in India. Together, we can do much more! |
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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.
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(Kanchipuram: 13, Thanjavur: 14, Perambalur: 15 and Chennai: 3). Vidyarambham promotes a cause that is close to Vibha’s objective. It creates opportunity through education. Vibha is proud to be a sponsor for this cause and we hope to continue this association.
