Why Should You Care
More than 90% tribal students in South Gujarat hail from poor families (less than 10k/month household income) and access poor quality education (less than 10% currently at grade proficiency level). Without quality education, the status quo regarding poverty and inequity is likely to persist.About the cause
Poor quality education is less about talent and more to do with access to two critical resources. a) Learning materials that children find interesting and relevant. b) A Guru (human resource) who can leverage the material resources and facilitate the process of learning in an interesting manner. Children from economically poor backgrounds suffer from a deficit of both these key resources. Simply accessing 5-6 hours of schooling has amply proven its ineffectiveness. Learning cannot be restricted to a particular space, time or person. It is all around us if we have the eye for it. Project Vidyavan is an attempt to involve the community in enhancing the scope of learning of their underserved child.
Activities
Our school “Shantaba Vidyalaya” is integrated with a hostel “Vatsalyadham” 34% of our school students are either orphans or those with single parents and almost all come from broken families. 68% of the students are tribal girls, who majorly drop out if access to free residential education is not provided. While our flagship project (Shantaba Vidyalaya) serves more than 720 tribal students in its Kukeri campus, the team is now growing the learnings in remote villages through establishing Vidyavan community learning centers. The Shantaba School classrooms serve as a lab to develop relevant curriculum which will be piloted in Vidyavan centers. Over the next couple of years we intend to put all the digital versions online for rural children across Gujarat to access.
Vidyavan Activities:
- Daily nutrition both in the morning and in the evening
- Learning Level based routines conducted in small group format
- Primary grade children will access specially designed board games, digital games, activity cards and outdoor games to make the learning fun.
- Areas covered will be foundation literacy, numeracy as well as thinking skills (general awareness and logical reasoning).
- Structured Guru Shishya format to encourage peer learning
- Special coaching for Eklavya School exams for 5th grade students every Sunday