Project Summary 

The objective of this project is to lay the foundation of education in the community over the next few years and to develop a scalable model that can create a self sustaining large scale literacy program.

** EMC Corporation will fund $11,444 to support our efforts in this project through their Community Involvement Program. We extend a special thanks to EMC for their trust and support of ILP.

Photos and Videos 

To be updated soon

Region Demographics

Gulbarga is one of the bottom five districts in terms of literacy and income index in the state of Karnataka, and has an appalling 45,000 children out of school. At the start of this project, socio-economic scene in Sedam was grim: 5,000 children out of school, 40% attendance in schools, only 5 to 10% of girls completing high school, poor enrollment in child care centers, and prevalent child labor (3%) with children being made to work in cotton fields. 45% schools had no power, 56% schools had no libraries, 81% of schools had no play areas. 20% of families do not speak the local language, child marriages were common, people were unaware of Government support programs, there was no community ownership of schools/education.

On the positive side, 90% of children stay in school once they reach class 9 and 10! The Department of Education is very supportive of developmental efforts from NGOs in the region. The Sarva Shiksha Abhiyaan (Education for All) program is alive and well in Gulbarga district. The immediate target region of Kodla cluster has very similar conditions as the entire Sedam block.

Intervention Details

To be updated soon.

Past Accomplishments

2009/2010: To be updated soon

2008/2009

• Activated 24 pre-school centers to enable a 50% increase in attendance
• Distributed Play & Learning materials to 19 pre-schools
• Trained 13 pre-school teachers to take care of 480 children
• Trained 36 pre-school teachers / workers for 9 training days
• Conducted 3-day children’s camps for 324 children in 6 villages
• Celebrated Independent/republic/children’s days in schools
• Enrolled 25 non-school going children in a bridge program
• Provided non-formal education for 89 drop-out children
• Conducted remedial classes for 170 school going children in 5 villages
• Trained 85 teachers on child protection
• Community awareness to nearly 8,000 via street plays, meetings etc
• Activated 48 women’s Self Help Groups (SHGs) covering 406 members in 10 villages
• Trained 361 members of pre-school and school monitoring committees on how to monitor their community’s schools.
• Enabled 264 women to participate in anti Child-Labor programs
• Formed Child Rights Clubs in 13 schools (248 children)
• Participated in 3 state-supported grievance-hearing programs at the local level
  

Success Stories 

To be updated soon.

About our Partner NGO 

• Community Development Foundation (CDF) was registered as an NGO in India in 2002.
• CDF has the experience of implementing a number of projects like Free a Child for Education (FACE) in Gulbarga District covering 29 villages and ~2000 children, Tsunami Rehabilitation Program in Tamil Naduproviding livelihood support for 671 families, and building schools benefiting ~5000 children in TamilNadu.
• CDF has also setup resource centers in various areas to collaborate and coordinate with NGOs, and designed school education programs, operational procedures for bridge centers for International Labor Organization (ILO).
• The chief functionary of CDF, Dr Mahendra Rajaram, holds a doctorate in social work with 11 years of related work experience. He has been the UNICEF coordinator for Gulbarga for the last few years. He was a program coordinator for a pilot project "Elimination of Child Labor in Gulbarga Block" (a joint program of the Government of Karnataka and UNICEF-NORAD). He facilitated the formation of Andhra Pradesh Alliance for Child Rights, which is leading the education campaign and child rights issues in collaboration with 400 NGOs and activists.
• The CDF program coordinator for our project in Sedum is Mr. Arun Serrao. Arun Serrao is a social worker with 20 years of grassroots experience in various areas. He has reviewed the National Child Labor Project Centers (NCLP) in Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh. He introduced training and monitoring of the ‘Child Track System’ (CTS), to monitor children’s progress in the NCLP centers. He also conducted training for grass root workers, Self Help Group leaders, Panchayat and School Developing and Monitoring Committee members.