Primary School Education for Children Studying in 5 Village Public Schools

Project location: India, Tamilnadu, Pudukottai
Project start date: January 2009 - Project end date: December 2009
Project number: 2008-49
Beneficiary: LEVERAGE

This project funded by the NPF aims at educating children attending the public primary school in 5 poor villages of the Pudukottai District (Tamil Nadu State, India).

At present, only 2 teachers work at these schools, taking care of 420 children overall , which means than their scholastic performance is inevitably poor. 

Furthermore, the poverty situation of these villages forces the families to stop their children from going to school in order to get the supplementary income to support their families, paving the way for a child labour system. Another problem is given by the traditional and old methods used in the classrooms, such as the use of the black board, text books, the reading classes, the repeating of the reading etc., that isboring to children who would enjoy various activities and playing as an educational method.

The project aims at training children in normal school subjects and in other extra curricular activities, by means of a team of training facilitators who will sharpen their talents and skills and improve their hidden potentials in academic as well as in extra curricular activities.
Children will be prepared so that they cancompete with children coming from the private schools of the urban centres. At the same time, parents will be educated and strongly motivated on the importance of children instruction, through village level orientation meetings for parents.

The activities will be performed as following:
- Orientation to project personnel team members. The training facilitators and the program coordinator will be trained in play-way methods of education and in activity-based learning methods, to enhance their teaching skills.
- Establishing of the 5 children facilitation centres in 5 locations. The children facilitation centres will be established in places where children from the villages could easily access. These centres will function for 3 hours/day, from evening hours to early night hours.
- Enrolling of children. School children will be enrolled in their homes and villages, reaching a maximum number of 420 children aged from 6 to 15.
- Running of the children facilitation centres. The children facilitators will train and support the children education through play-way methods and activity-based learning methods.
- Organizing competitions in different skills and arts. All the enrolled children will take part in competitions such as drawing, painting, essay writing, oratory, dances, story telling, and sports activities which will help children to show their talents and potentials, compete with the others, and experience the feeling of success and the disappointment of failures.
- Conducting parents' motivation meetings in 5 villages. Parents' motivation meetings will be organised mostly during weekends, when parents are free from work. Meetings will be participatory and interactive, to facilitate their learning and motivation.
- Monitoring and evaluation.