CHALO STEML SIKHAYEIN

Education is fundamental to an equitable society. An excellent education equips children and youth with the knowledge, skills, values, and mindsets needed to be empowered individuals and responsible citizens. The fact that a high-quality education has wide-ranging benefits for individuals and societies has been demonstrated, time and again, by countries across the world. With nearly 1 in 4 people below the age of 14 years, India today stands at an inflection point; where we go from here depends in large part on our ability to provide equal opportunities for all children to attain an excellent education.

The truth is that today, more than 50% of students in Grade 5 cannot read a Grade 2 text or solve a simple subtraction problem. The truth is that today, the socio-economic circumstances that a child is born into determines the type of school she attends, the kinds of co-curricular opportunities that are available to her, the quality of life outcomes she attains as an adult, and the kinds of opportunities she passes on to her own children.

The causes underlying this failure are numerous, varied and complex. The fact is that teachers alone cannot solve this crisis; we also need excellent school principals to support those teachers, informed parents to stay engaged with the teaching-learning process in schools, active civil society volunteers to contribute their bit in improving the education system in the slums and vernacular schools.

While DBM is doing a host of programmes with these schools, there was a need to channelise the help of the volunteers.  With this motive the CES Project of DBM was launched. It enables Volunteers to contribute their bit in this cause of improving the educational standards of the needy schools.

Problem Statement:

Proper basic education is a human right. It is a tool for empowerment and means for social and economic development and hence essential for eradicating poverty and tackling issues like child mortality, gender equality, sustainable development and peace.

Project Rationale:

• During our survey there was found a great desire amongst students, parents and teachers to learn English.
• All good jobs require a certain level of English communication and understanding.
• Many vernacular schools were seeing students going away to English medium schools for ‘better prospects’.

Objectives of the project:

To ensure that children get education which is their constitutional right and to ensure that children develop self confidence, opening more career opportunities for them and do not feel inferior due to lack of basic English skills.

Brief Implementation Plan:

• Identify schools in the mentioned areas through social workers
• Meeting with School Principals for their views and feedback
• Follow up where in they provide a list of their students who need to be taught
• School dates and timetable and holiday and exam schedule taken
• Dates and time charts are drawn up
• Teacher and volunteers are identified and oriented with CES booklets
• Regular monitoring & feedback at intervals.

Employee volunteering opportunities–

Employees of any organization can engage in our CES Project on both short and long-term basis, as there is always a requirement of volunteers to mentor/teach all these children. They can come to the schools and conduct English classes.

Expected Outcomes:

• Positive attitude towards learning, increasing curiosity, making studying an enjoyable experience resulting in better attendance and results overall
• Also reduced drop out, better attention span and an end result of good academic performance and holistic growth (details of our supplementary educational programs for the students are on our website www.dbmindia.org

NGO Monitoring and Evaluating Mechanism:

• The Project is monitored for quality by DBM staff visits and Board Member visits throughout the year.
• There is a pre-assessment tests at the start of the year and then a post assessment test at the end to see and measure the learning outcomes.
• Periodic review sessions are held with teachers and volunteers and on the basis of their feedback and suggestions the course is suitably modified if needed.