Help 450 Rural Kids In Masarhi Stay In School And Get Learning Support

Story

When I saw them for the first time almost a year back, first time I was visiting a village in Bihar, A typical north Indian Village for that matter, what I saw was lack of any hope in the eyes of many of these children and a hope that is dying in many others. Many of the children here want to study, they are ready to work hard more than any other I have seen in my last 26 years going against all tides. What they wanted at first was a role model, a mentor whom they can reach out to, I tried to be that, Thanks to Doctors for You. With support of DFY I established a learning centre in Masarhi Village and with the support of community volunteers and a consultant have been doing the best of our ability to facilitate the educational pursuits of children primarily from most backward communities including the mahadalits, “Mushars”. Here is a link to a blog post that appeared on Better India, http://www.thebetterindia.com/103835/husband-wife-duo-educate-rural-children-bihar/ .

Over the last many months we have established an ASSP Program for basic education, a computer centre, story corner and a host of other programs.

After- School Support Program (ASSP) - Launched by DFY in December 2015, this program is implemented to support rural students a taste of quality basic education. This program is formulated keeping in mind to attain basic literacy and further facilitate whole-person development/personal growth. As of today more than 450 students from more than 7 villages including Masarhi attend this program every day.
English through Story Telling and Creativity Class - Learning a different language is difficult and that too English Language when it is for kids of rural Bihar. At Learning Centre we use story telling, drawing and painting and even story writing sessions to interest students in learning English or more than that their personality development, creativity and public speaking capabilities.
English Class - Through these classes, we intend to improve the basic understanding of English language for students above 8th Standard. These classes with limited intake of 30 students per batch is taught basic English grammar and to enable them to make basic English conversation.
Public School Interventions (PSI) - Through this program, our team visit and support public school facility in the vicinity, including Anganwadi’s and primary schools and conduct story, game and knowledge sharing sessions with the support of teachers.
Library - EII have inaugurated a working library on 25th June, 2016 which works based on Membership. This small library equipped with 450 odd books is having story books as well as basic science texts.
Computer Centre: Our Computer Centre established some 9 months ago have trained 35 youngsters in an around this centre. Today the centre is affiliated to NIIT Foundation, one of the leaders in the country in computer education and the successful candidates are provided certificates with Intel approval.

The Proposed Intervention

Having worked on above areas for the past few years with the support of community Volunteers, with added demand from the community needs to be upgraded with digital content. As of now we have agreement with organisations working on similar project to share their digital content we have to incorporate this and update our centre into a digital classroom.

Breakdown of funds required to sustain the learning centre this year:

Considering the above now we have to purchase around 25 tablets at a ratio of 1 tablet per 5-6 students to benefit >125 student in class 2 &3 for better delivery of learning con- tent.

1) Digital Tablets: 25 Tablets at INR 4000 per tablet: 100,000 INR

2) Other Expenses: Admin Charges including training of Volunteers: 10,000 INR

Total Requirement: 110,000 INR