Grass root level approach for sustainable development
- Part 5 :: Children's Education -
By Grace Laikhuram *
Children's education:
Sampark started giving support to children with the objective of reducing the drop out rate which are very prominent in the villages
of Koppal district due to the economic and social conditions. Education committee is formed to improve the primary education level.
This committee engages in activities like identifying the poor children, enrolment of children's camps, school visits and parent teacher meetings. The committee identifies the poorest children who need to be supported, the list of the identifies children from each group is discussed and finalized.
Committe now visits school regularly, conducting meetings with parents and are supporting the cause of schooling for all children thereby hoping to reduce the number of drop outs .conducted special classes, children's camps, street theatre etc.
Committee members take on the responsibility of
- 100% enrolment
- No further drop outs
- Motivating parents and children
- Continuous flow up and discussion at group and cluster levels
- Visits to school and getting feedbacks
- Conducting special classes
- Results sharing with group clusters and sampark
Children are taken to nearest temple in the outskirts of villages and discussed the importance of the quality education to motivate the children to continue schooling, children participated in various cultural events such as singing, dancing, drama and essay writing, and they enjoyed themselves immensely
Street plays: conducted community awareness programme through street plays, issues addressed are education, health awareness, superstitious beliefs and effect of health, alcoholism etc.
Educational support: Educational support covers all scheduled caste children as well as very poor category of non-scheduled caste children from 17 villages.
Agriculture practice:
Vermin-compost training: sampark conducted six demonstration training sessions in six villages on
- Size of vermin-compost pit
- Method of vermin-compost production
- Management
- Use of compost manure(own use and marketing)
Vermin compost started by the farmers individually in the villages and start marketing the compost manure and earn about Rs 3000-5000 every 3 months.
Children's creche in Bangalore
Sampark has started two creche for children of construction workers in Bangalore to create an environment where children of construction workers can get an informal education and be taken care of while their parents work uninterrupted
Impact:
Running the creche for the construction worker's children resulted several impacts both in the children's and their parent's lives and also at the organization level
Children level:
- The children are happy in the creche and are motivated to attend the creche regularly by themselves
- Children learnt alphabets in English, Kannada and numbers. They also practice simple mathematics and forming small words in English and Kannada.
- Children learnt to maintain cleanliness
- Children more confident to talk to outsiders and now able to perform events on stage.
- Increase in income levels as they get time to go to work otherwise they had to stay at home to take care of the children
- All the parents are happy that their children are having nutritious food during lunch and also learning different languages
Concluded....
* Grace Laikhuram, doing Post Graduation in Mass Communication, contributes regularly to e-pao.net. The writer can be reached at grace(dot)laikhuram(at)gmail(dot)com
This was webcasted on 23rd January 2009.
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