Taking the help of Pratham

We had the city coordinator from Pratham join our meeting on Saturday. Taking up her offer, two students from Gayatri Vidya Parishad Engineering college will be going to two locations in the city to speak to the citizens in that area about the special focus on primary education.

Prize - A piece of chocolate

A piece of chocolate will be given on Saturday to the person who gets the most number of queries regarding their white ribbon tomorrow (Tuesday). This will only apply to questions on Tuesday and not for any additional responses for the rest of the week.

The generous donor happens to be me. :-)

30-minute educative documentary in the making

A 30-minute educative video documentary is being prepared by Future Frames, a very cooperative and community service minded audio video studio located in Vizag. The video is still a work in progress because we now have ideas from children but ideas from parents, concerned citizens, teachers, administrators, etc. need to be collected and included.

Chance to talk for at least 30 minutes on Primary Education

Sushma, a young lady who is apparently also a radio show host/hostess has volunteered to highlight our efforts for effective primary education on radio when her show comes up next time. We'll have to wait for that since it is going to be about 10-15 days later. We knew that we had talent within us, but who knew that it would show up so early?!

Did I mention that the student participants are planning to wear white ribbons with the words Primary Education written/sketched/painted on the ribbon? We have to wait and see what kind of creative designs they come up with.

Excited about International Literacy Day (8 September)

A lot of college students have enthusiastically come forward to take up the white ribbon campaign idea. Some of them like Siva Kesava Kumar are going to make posters and put them in their college notice boards. His classmates and juniors, very energetic girls, are planning on wearing the white ribbon from tomorrow, Tuesday, September 8, 2009 till Saturday. They are not content with one day because they feel that for more people to learn about this, some continuity is required. This idea, of wearing the white ribbon for more than a day was extended by N. Srinivas of N. Sampath Raghav Charitable Trust.

In the meantime, Panth has volunteered to talk to some radio stations and request them to broadcast details of this campaign today (7 September) on their programs. Let us hope that at least a few radio stations will join hands with us.

Systems and Practices in Primary School Education

Rewinding to the workshop that was conducted, here is some information collected by Mr. Pragnanand of GlobalAid. Do remember that these are just outlines that are supposed to help us discuss the issues in further detail.

Systems and Practices in Primary School Education

• Norms & Standards for a school
• Number of teachers (male-female ratio)
• Minimum number of working days/instructional hours in an academic year
• Minimum number of working hours per week per teacher
• Teacher learning equipment
• Library
• Play material, games and sports equipment
  
• Mid-day Meals
• Text Books and Note Books
• Volunteers
• Teaching Materials and Teaching Aids
• Administration
• Parents
• Public Representatives
• Role of local communities
  

Photos from the rally

Some photos from the rally for effective primary education on the 14th of August 2009. These photos were taken at the end of the rally. On the very top is Dr. Parameswara Rao of BCT seen garlanding the statue of Mahatma Gandhi. Below that some of the rally participants can be seen following which is Manmohan, from ILP-Hyderabad with the list of organizations that participated in the rally. To the right is Prof. Somaraju garlanding Mahatma Gandhi's statue.

To the left is a view of the children applauding the skit on education performed by BCT School children. On top is another view of the rally participants. On top of that are the nursing school students, in pink, who also enthusiastically participated.