The Beacon from India Literacy Project : May-June 2006

The Beacon

Newsletter of the India Literacy Project

May-June 2007 Vol 14 Issue 5-6

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From the Editor’s desk

Dear ILP volunteers

We are very pleased to bring you the May-June edition of Beacon. The past two months have been very engaging for the ILP volunteers. Two major milestones were achieved in these months. First being an outstanding performance by Team ILP in the relay and the second, the mega success of the 9^th Annual Race for Literacy. Team ILP fielded three teams, Samosas and Chai, Reading wRiting and Running and Literally Running respectively. There were a total of 36 runners in these teams. Team ILP raised about $43000 as pledges. The 9^th Annual Race for Literacy raised about $20000.

The project focus section in this issue features the SPREADS project in Chittoor district, Andhra Pradesh. This project has been effective in as many as 20 villages in the Gopipalem area of the Chittoor mandal. The biggest achievement of this project is that the SPREADS intervention has brought many girl children up to Class XII level.

Mamatha, an ILP volunteer shares her enthusiastic account of the first day she spent teaching in the Mastan Nagar school in Hyderabad.

Enjoy reading!

Editor

Editorial Team

Projects Focus

Many Successes and a few learnings… the SPREADS Story!

Subhash Pochareddy

Background

In September 2000, ILP-India coordinator made a 2-day visit to Chittoor District in Andhra Pradesh to evaluate a project proposal from an NGO called Society for People’s Research, Environmental Affairs and Developmental Service (SPREADS). Due to poor functioning of schools, parents’ ignorance regarding education, migration, poor health and poverty, village children were not attending school, dropping out, or progressing with minimal learning. SPREADS’ project outline involved conducting evening tuition sessions for children to impart the fundamentals of elementary education. This would enable them to transition smoothly to secondary schools and then to higher education, which was free if they could enter the government residential schools.

The ILP coordinator came away with mixed feelings – SPREADS was a relatively inexperienced NGO, but had a genuine concern for the development of the area, and most importantly showed a keen interest to learn and evolve into a better NGO. ILP had decided to fund this project starting January 2001. Six full years later, the completion of the project brought an immense sense of satisfaction and achievement for the ILP team.

Where, What and How

The SPREADS project touched as many as 20 villages in the Gopipalem area of the Chittoor mandal. In 6 years, SPREADS provided free evening coaching sessions for in the backward communities as shown in the table below.

Year	# Centers	# Volunteers	# Children Educated
Year	# Centers	# Volunteers	Boys	Girls	Total
2001	20	20	280	255	535
2002	20	20	265	217	482
2003	20	20	288	234	522
2004	20	20	298	262	560
2005	14	14	315	270	585
2006	10	10	136	110	246
		Total à	1582	1348	2930

The children were divided into 4 groups on the basis of volunteers’ assessment of the child – Vikas (beginners), Vikranth (can identify letters and numbers), Jayanth (can read and write words and sentences) and Vijay (are good at reading and writing). Once the learning levels of the children were increased, it was easier to ensure that they joined the high school after completion of 5^th grade or got admission in private schools.

In the latter part of the project, ILP guided SPREADS to re-prioritize the project to focus on providing tuitions in 10 villages (versus 20) while further increasing the efforts on involving the community to ensure sustainability of the project successes. They used simple, yet effective methods to educate the parents and the community. An example was the use of newspaper articles about successful women to convince villagers to educate the girl child. Though AP government abolished the School Education Committees recently, SPREADS continued to work with the Village Education Committees and meetings were conducted once in every two months, Self Help Groups helped in monitoring the attendance/retention program in all the 10 villages, sarpanch visited the schools to monitor teacher’s attendance, and the government school teachers were very supportive. These activities and observations provided the confidence that parents would ensure that their children continued in school. 6 of the 10 villages now have coaching centers run by volunteers and other community members with very little guidance from SPREADS. It has been a challenge for SPREADS in other 4 villages to reduce the community’s dependence on the SPREADS to continue the literacy efforts, but SPREADS is continuing the efforts.

In summary, SPREADS achieved the goal of promoting education among the rural economically backward children in the project area. The ILP team witnessed SPREADS’ success in ensuring that all children are in school. Yet, the biggest achievement may be the fact that many girl children have reached 12^th grade level of education due to SPREADS’ intervention.

Author’s Note:

Being a new ILP-US volunteer who didn’t visit this project, I was apprehensive to write this article. Yet, as I was sifting through the many project reports and documents, it was fascinating to visualize how the project evolved, adjusting to the needs of the day, and always focusing on doing the right thing – even if that meant making changes to the plan. I would have been quite disappointed if all those reports had indicated high-flying success all the time. The fact that failure was experienced, documented and course corrections implemented made this as real a project as I would be involved in at my day job… and augmented my respect manifold for the tireless SPREADS & ILP employees and volunteers who worked on making this project a success.

ILP Contacts

General Inquiries
ilp@ilpnet.org

India Office
ilpindia@gmail.com

+91 80 23519693

Bangalore Chapter
Victor Tauro
ilpindia@gmail.com
+91 080-23519693

California Chapter
Sreedhar Alavattam
ilp-ca@ilpnet.org

Ohio Chapter

Kavya Krishna

ilp-ohio@ilpnet.org

Hyderabad Chapter

Manmohan Jain

+91-98498-42002

Jain.manmohan@gmail.com

Washington DC Chapter
Rajesh Chandran
703.772.0737
ilp-dc@ilpnet.org

Projects
Padmaja Sathyamoorthy
projects@ilpnet.org

The Beacon
Nandakumar Krishnan - Editor
Sukeerthi Seetharaman- Ass. Editor
beacon@ilpnet.org

Finance
Sandeep Shroff
650.652.9095
finance@ilpnet.org

ILP's Homepage
www.ilpnet.org

Donate for a cause - Support literacy programs
ILP is registered as a non-profit organization in the USA (Tax ID# 36-3779020). 100% of the funds collected by ILP USA are sent to India . All administrative costs in the USA are absorbed by volunteers.
To donate in the USA, make a tax deductible check or draw Money order payable to "India Literacy Project" and mail to India Literacy Project, P. O. Box 361143, Milpitas, CA 95035-9998.

ILP is registered as a trust in India. Donors can claim tax deduction under section 80G of the Income-Tax Act. To donate in India, make cheques payable to "India Literacy Project" and mail them to India Literacy Project, 27, 3rd Floor, Narayani Apartments, 2nd Cross, Ramakrishnappa Layout Geddalahalli, Sanjaynagar,
Bangalore -560094.

Volunteer Corner

My first day at Mastan Nagar school

Mamatha

Technically, my second day. The first day I tagged along with Meeta Grovor and watched as she told the 1st graders a story in Hindi with lovely pictures to help the children understand. Nirmala was translating into telugu for the benefit of the children.

Today I went as a substitute for Meeta equipped with a beautifully depicted story (done by volunteers at My Home Navdeepa). I was nervous since I had never taught nor do I speak Hindi at home (I can read, write and understand). Nirmala came along to guide me. The butterflies in my stomach lasted only until I entered the school premises. There was a lot of excitement and noise happening due to annual day practices. I suddenly felt like I belonged there. As my sto unfolded to the children, I became a part of them. Some of the children were very enthusiastic, some kept going off and coming on, and few others couldn't have cared less. At first I tried to get to the non-attentive ones, but then left them alone when it didn't work. By the time I was done with the story and Nirmala had them read and identify the words on the flash cards, they were ready for something else. We asked them to draw a train (the story was about a train) and then, even the least attentive child made an attempt at it. Some of their drawing abilities were fantastic !

Next I tried a telugu song with them. The girls were more enthusiastic than the boys. I did the song (with them repeating after me) slowly at first and then increased the speed. They loved the second speed and so did I! When I was ready to leave, I asked them to form a train and leave the class and they just wouldn't quit going Chuk, chuk.. I am not sure if I did a good job or not, but I enjoyed the whole experience so much (probably more than the kids) that I felt charged for the rest of the day.

Chapter/Organization News

9^th Annual Race for Literacy

Mountain View, CA, May 22nd, 2007: The 9^th Annual Race for Literacy was held on May 13^th 2007 at the scenic Shoreline Park in Mountain View. This year’s race was held on Mothers Day to honor a mother’s role in educating a child. The volunteers of the California Chapter of the India Literacy Project worked very hard for the past 5 months to put up a grand show on race day. This year’s race had record breaking 800 registrants! The rigorous marketing campaign and a spruced up smooth registration system helped in increasing the number of registrants this year.

The kite flying area in Shoreline Park came alive with colorful balloons, foot tapping music, lively emcee, a big and bright Nemo banner ( presented to us by our sponsor EFI) mouthwatering food and informative ILP booths on Ten Dollars for Literacy initiative, focus on projects in various parts of India etc. This year’s messaging team along with creating posters and informative material also captured the user experience in the form of surveys and interviews with participants.

Dottie the clown kept the young and restless crowd occupied by patiently working with each kid’s individual request for artistic face painting and animal shaped balloons. The kids also participated in a 100 meters race in their exuberant style.

This year's winners in the 10K race were Urbano Silva and Marion Stras who finished in 35 mins 49 secs & 41mins 01 secs respectively. For more details on the event and complete results, please visit www.raceforliteracy.org

ILP would like to thank our sponsors for this year’s events. Our platinum sponsor this year was EFI. The gold sponsors for this year’s event were New India Bazaar, BMW of Mountain View, SonicWall, Citrix, Spansion and Tenex. Lovely sweets, Propel, Accelerade and Southern Spice were the silver sponsors and provided tasty food and beverages for all participants. Creative sponsored MP3 players, Noise canceling head phones and other audio items that were given as raffles prizes.

The ILP volunteer base once again rose to the occasion and made the event a big success by helping out in various ways. The proceeds from this event go towards promoting literacy among the underprivileged in India. More information on ILP can be found online at www.ilpnet.org

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