Door Step School Mumbai & Pune Project Annual Report 2007-2008
Door Step School
Annual Report
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Door Step School-Mumbai Jagannath Shankarsheth Municipal School Bldg., 2nd floor, Room No 54/55, Nana Chowk , Grant Road, Mumbai -400 007 Phone:022 -23826343 Fax :23859203 E mail : [email protected]
Door Step School-Pune 110, Parimal Anand Park, Aundh, Pune 411 007 Phone: 9520- 25898762/25432165 E mail : [email protected]
do visit us on www.doorstepschool.org
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Foreword
Often in our line of work successes are fewer than the frustrations we face. And then comes the strength to go on. This year it came from a rather unconventional young crusader- 9 year old Hiresh Limaya Valmiki.
When Hiresh was not in class, which was for the better part of the day, his untiring teacher knew where to find him. He would be scavenging around the community garbage heap. The metal and plastic scrap he gathered fetched him about Rs. 50 every day. He saw no reason to give up such a good source of income just to learn a few letters. His teacher’s perseverance though paid off when many months later as his interest grew, he not only became a regular in class but brought with him 8 more fellow scavengers. This year he successfully appeared for the Std II exam.
It is these stories that make the work we engage in matter. Statistics and numbers are meaningful but do little to convey the impact on lives.
Rajani Paranjpe & Bina Lashkari
President Director
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Smt. Rajani Paranjpe receiving the award on the 26th of January 2008
Every year, Maharshi Karve Stree Shikshan Samstha honors a woman social worker for her dedicated social work in social field or in educational field. This is done by awarding her a the “Baya Karve Puraskar”. This ‘Puraskar’ is being awarded since 1996-97.
We are happy to share with you that this year the Baya Karve Puraskar has been awarded to Mrs. Rajani Paranjpe, one of our founder member and current President, for her work in the educational field. Mrs. Paranjpe is an inspiration to the entire Door Step School family
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INDEX Content Page No.
5-34 MUMBAI PROJECT
DOOR STEP SCHOOL 5 Mission, Vision, Goal, Core Values INTRODUCTION 6 COMMUNITY BASED INTERVENTION 6-22 Balwadi (Preprimary ) 7 Non Formal Education Classes 10 Study Classes 13 Community Learning Centre 16 Computer Centre 18 Bal Samuha 19 Bus Service 21 ENROLMENT IN MUNICIPAL SCHOOLS 23 SCHOOL PARTNERSHIP PROJECT 24 TRAINING 27 PROGRAMME AT COMMUNITY AND ORGANISATIONAL LEVEL 31 FUTURE PLAN 34 PUNE PROJECT 37-67 INTRODUCTION 37 JOURNEY TO EXPANSION 37 DIRECT EDUCATION 41-50 Balwadi (Preprimary ) 42 Study Classes 42 Non Formal Education Classes 45 SUPPORTIVE ACTIVITIES 51 PROJECT GROW WITH BOOKS 53 (Reading Classes and related activities) OTHER ACTIVITIES 61 TRAINING CENTER ‘PARIVARTAN’ 64 PUBLICATIONS 65
ROLE OF VOLUNTEERS 65 FUTURE PLANS 66 APPENDIX 1: LIST OF PUBLICATION 67 EXECUTIVE BODY MEMEBRS 68
ACCOUNTABILITY AND TRANSPARENCY 68 THANKS TO • Our Major Project Partners 69
• Our Other Supporters And Well Wishers 70 • Visitors 71 • Volunteers • 71 BALANCESHEET 72-75
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DOOR STEP SCHOOL – MUMBAI
ANNUAL REPORT 2007-2008
Mission
All children deserve an education. An alarming number of India’s urban poor still remain without an opportunity to receive formal education. Our mission at Door Step School is to bridge this divide, using innovative programmes that will bring education to these children and help them make the transition to literacy and a brighter future.
Vision
To be an instrumental force that brings development to children
Goal
Primary education for all children up to 14 years of age
Core Values
• Respect for the community and children • Focus on development • Maintain high Quality standards • Participation of all stakeholders in the development process • Empathy towards those less privileged • Integrity and Openness in all activities undertaken
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INTRODUCTION
At Door Step School, the year 2007-08, we moved into our second year of Organisational Development. In 2006-07, the efforts had begun in partnership with Avalon Consulting and with Dasra. This year, we devoted even more time to thinking and rethinking our targets and the resources we would need to achieve them. It has been a great learning exercise, bringing even more of a professional touch to our work. It was the first time that we looked at planned growth and all that would go into achieving it, which would involve a good deal of recruiting. We hope to begin implementation of this in 2009, once we have most of the resources in place.
While we struggled with what will be, our team in the field worked hard to ensure that all projects were on track. Some developments like the MCGM’s Slum Rehabilitation drive affected the targets we had set for this year, but we look on that as a change for the better for the families that benefited.
Position of Door Step School Community Based Classes In Mumbai & Pune 2007-08
In Mumbai * In Pune No. of No. of Type of Class units Boys Girls Total units Boys Girls Total BALWADI 37 588 666 1254 47 832 872 1704 N F E 36 343 532 875 64 754 924 1678 STUDY CLASS 49 634 504 1138 37 360 338 698 Total :7347 112 1565 1702 3267 148 1946 2134 4080 NB: Approximately another 22,000 children are covered through direct intervention in corporation schools in both cities.
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BALWADI
Distribution of Children Attending Door Step School Balwadi
Ward Balwadi Units Boys Girls Total A Babasaheb Ambedkar Nagar 4 57 59 116 (Punarvasit) Babasaheb Ambedkar Nagar (Main) 2 43 35 78 Babasaheb Ambedkar Nagar – Ext 2 36 37 73 Colaba Municipal School 3 52 53 105 Ganesh Murti Nagar 2 36 28 64 Garib Janata Nagar 1 5 23 28 Mahatma Phule Nagar-Nariman 1 10 14 24 Point Shivshakti Nagar 1 23 20 43 B Masjid Bunder- B Ward 3 38 48 86 School On Wheels –II Wadi Bunder 1 17 15 32 E Boat Hard Street 1 19 20 39 Darga Galli 1 16 15 31 Hariyana Gate 1 14 14 28 Hey Bunder 1 15 14 29 Kawla Bunder 1 23 22 45 Kolsa Bunder 1 9 9 18 Lakadi Bunder 1 17 13 30 MOD 1 20 17 37 New Tank Bunder 4 69 91 160 Pardhiwada 1 15 32 47
Powder Bunder 1 11 19 30
Reti Bunder 1 17 22 39
School On Wheels -II Reay Road 2 26 46 72 Grand Total 37 588 666 1254
Door Step School’s efforts to identify and enroll preschoolers in the balwadi programmes continued this year.
The basic objective remained that of preparing the children using a variety of language and math readiness activities. Efforts at creating a conducive learning environment and an inducement to continue towards formal schooling were also sustained.
In an effort of provide an age appropriate intervention the children whose ages were recorded as 4years or more were placed in the Sr. Group and the younger ones in the Jr. group. However, when it was time to enroll them in school in June, many were refused admission on the grounds that they were too young. Discussions with our team revealed that the age given by the parents at the time of registration was not accurate. To prevent this situation from recurring we are trying to identify a simple way of determining if a child has completed 4 years of age.
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Ward wise Distribution of Children in Balwadis (2007-08)
Jr. Sr. Grand No. of Ward Total Units 3-4 yrs. Over 4 yrs. M F Total M F Total
A 16 157 154 311 105 115 220 531
B 4 34 29 63 21 34 55 118
E 17 163 188 351 108 146 254 605
Total 37 354 371 725 234 295 529 1254
58% 42%
Total of 41 balwadis had been planned for the year, of which 3 in Ward A and 1 in Ward B could not be started.
At the end of year, 317 children from the Sr. Group and 96 children from the Jr. group have been enrolled in formal school. Given that 127 out of the 317 in the Sr. group have discontinued during the year, the predominant reason being moving out of the community, expected 80% of this group have been enrolled in school. Forty eight percent of the children will continue with the balwadi in the coming year.
The attendance of students in the balwadi is most regular, when compared to other Door Step School’s community based programmes
Attendance of students in Balwadi Attd 0-20% 8%
Attd 21-49% 23%
Attd 50-100% 69%
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Activities that were introduced last year for the Jr. and Sr. groups were continued and some new ones were introduced. Some of the new techniques / activities are:
• Pairing of words to recall new words better. • Wearing “ghungroos” on their ankles was a great way to get a feel of rhythm and music through the melodious sound the children could create with the bells. • Teachers made soft balls made out of old socks and rags. They are safer than plastic balls, as they do not hurt and also can be provided in larger numbers. • Building blocks made by stuffing small cartons with old raddi paper and wrapping them with brightly coloured paper. After the wrapping started coming of the children indulged their curiosity by opening the boxes and pulling out the stuffing to see what was hidden inside.
A rather innovative teacher invited a vegetable vendor to her class for a lesson on vegetables. A great way of using the multi sensory approach as the children held the vegetables in their had as they learned their name. At the end they even got the chance of taking the vegetables back home.
Story telling, always a favorite, came specially alive when one of the children brought a rabbit to school while the story of the “Hare and the Tortoise” was being enacted.
Children were also given the opportunity of playing with sand, aiming balls into baskets, balancing on bricks, all of which helped to channel physical energy and increased their coordination capabilities.
Material prepared by Galli Galli Sim Sim, the Indian version of Sesame Street was introduced into the balwadis this year. The material is very attractive and child friendly. There are story boards, flash charts, games, worksheets and a bioscope. The material has been devised with great thought and focuses on language development and on delivering appropriate value based messages to preschoolers.
Door Step School also collaborated with Niramaya, who work on the health component of preschoolers.
The Christmas celebration was the big event for the balwadi kids. It was held on 20 December 2007 at the Colaba Woods for the communities in ward A and on 27 th December, 2007 at Tata Garden for the communities in E ward. This year the event had been planned in a manner that allowed every child to be a participant. This was greatly appreciated by the parents, who voiced the feeling that there should be more such occasions in the year. The program involved music & movement, and needed a lot of practice and coordination and each teacher accompanied her own group of children to ensure smooth transition from one movement to another.
Children at each location were taken for two or three educational visits. They visited the Cooperage Garden where the horses were a great draw, the Mazgaon Garden and the Kamala Nehru Park at Malabar Hill. Some parents accompanied the groups where the number of children were large and were a great help in taking care of the children, who had a rollicking time in the fresh air and open surroundings.
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This year also saw some very successful parent meetings. A wide variety of topics came under discussion, such as fees, attendance, hygiene, plans for forthcoming festivals and outings. A very positive feed back from the parents was that the children attending the balwadis were more alert, observant and vocal in their interactions with their families and the community.
A look at the Sr. group’s performance at the end of the year, shows that in wards A & B, where the program is well established as are the classes, 47% of this group have accomplished between 75 -100% of the expected level. In ward E, the performance is on par in verbal language skills and recognition of numbers but in recognition of letters of the alphabet, only about 20% of them have achieved this level.
The importance of having birth certificates was emphasized with all balwadi parents. For those born in the city, parents were advised on how to procure birth certificates.
COMMUNITY BASED NON FORMAL EDUCATION CLASSES
Distribution of Children Attending Door Step School – Non Formal Education Classes
Ward Non Formal Education Units Boys Girls Total Babasaheb Ambedkar Nagar 7 (Punarvasit) 49 113 162 Babasaheb Ambedkar Nagar 6 A (Main) 45 109 154 Babasaheb Ambedkar Nagar – 3 Ext 7 57 64 Domestic Worker 1 19 -- 19 Ganesh Murti Nagar 2 24 28 52 Shivshastri Nagar 1 6 12 18 Shivshakti Nagar 1 4 16 20 Masjid Bunder- B Ward 1 5 8 13 B School on Wheels -II 2 Wadi Bunder 32 24 56 C School on Wheels - I 2 30 31 61 Boat Hart Street 1 7 17 24 Darga Galli 1 15 9 24 E Hariyana Gate 1 7 7 14 Lakadi Bunder 1 5 13 18 New Tank Bunder 3 45 37 82 Pardhiwada 1 12 18 30 School on Wheels -II 2 Reay Road 31 33 64 Grand Total 36 343 532 875
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The primary objective of Door Step School’s non formal education classes is to provide an opportunity of education for out of school children from urban slum and pavement communities. Often families, who have moved from their villages to the city in search of a livelihood, count each child as a member who must also contribute his or her earnings to the family’s income. Thus for these families the education of their children is not a priority, even if free schooling is available in a nearby Municipal School. In fact there is sometimes active resistance to the child being kept away from his primary duty of earning a living.
Sometimes, even if parents are motivated enough and wish to get their child admitted in the school, they may not have the documents necessary for admission. For such children, once enrolled in the non formal education class, Door Step School acts as a liaison to prepare the child for an appropriate level and facilitate admission in school in the following academic year.
The non formal education classes are conducted in the most flexible way possible, bringing the class to the child, near his habitat, at a convenient time, and with the contents and teaching methods modified to the child’s requirements. The Schools on Wheels reach out to street children. For youth employed as domestic help the concerned coordinator visited the homes where they were employed. It was possible to do this with the help of the managers of the housing society.
Last year’s total enrolment in the non formal education classes was 839 children. This year there were 875 students enrolled in the 37 non formal education classes.
In 07-08 we had
532 girls attending the Non formal education classes, i.e. 61%
600 students, i.e. 69 % were new entrants.
258 students, i.e. 29 % continued from the previous year
17 students, i.e. 2% were readmitted
At end of 07-08, we had
Status at the end of the year of N F E students
Discontinued during the year, 31%
Continued till the end of Successfully the year, 55% enrolled in formal schools, 15%
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This pattern of about a 1/3 of the students from NFE classes shifting have remained constant over the years.
It is matter of concern though that 15% of those who discontinued did so because of lack of interest and poor parental motivation, factors that we hope affect and bring some change in.
Happy Endings……. Surendra, an 8 year old who attends the NFE class at Ganesh Murti Nagar, came from his village 2 years ago with his family. Both parents had completed a few years of primary schooling but are today unable to read or write, were very keen that their son gets some schooling in the city. The change to the city was probably quite traumatic for Surendra who took a long time to settle down in class. Because of his rather violent reactions to being in the class, sometimes even biting a fellow classmate he was not easily accepted by his classmates. Patient counseling by the teacher has helped him to settle down in class and he is very likely to be enrolled in the municipal school next year.
……and Not So Happy Endings The Valmikis are originally nomadic tribal. Many of them have been living in the communities in the Badhwar park area. They rarely want to send their children to school and need a lot of intervention to ensure that their children get some schooling. Most of the time this intervention meets with reasonable success, but not always.
Bobby Valmiki is one of 4 siblings, but he is the only one staying with is father and step mother. His father is an alcoholic and does seem to care what happens to the boy. The stepmother insists that he handles household chores and has also got him a job at a local store. The Door Step School team managed to convince his employer to give him an hour off for attending class every afternoon, but the step mother does not like this arrangement and wants to put a stop to it.
The students of the non formal education classes were distributed between Std I to V as shown in the table below.
Class level Girls Boys General
Preparing for Std I 181 144 325 Std I 295 146 441 Preparing for Std II 4 5 9 Std II 28 24 52 Std III 12 9 21 Std IV 12 14 26 Std V 1* 1 Total 532 343 875
*This child had appeared for the Std. IV exam last year, but wanted to remain in the non formal education class.
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In April, when students of the BMC schools appear for the year end exam, the non formal education class students also get the opportunity to take the language, i.e. Hindi and the Maths exam. To determine which children should take this exam, the students are screened internally in October and class wise lists are prepared. At this stage, a list of 152 children was made. At the time of the exam in April only 99 were around to take the exam, and 77 of them completed both papers successfully. This is a phenomenon we see every year, as families may have shifted, parents may have taken the children with them to their villages and in the case of some older boys employed with the fishing industry, they may be away on boats or at the Karanja harbor across.
Another Happy Ending Unfortunately, not many children can enforce their right to make their own decisions as did Amit Choudhary, a student of the Domestic Workers class. Amit was all ready to appear for the Std. II exam when asked to return home (in the village) for some family event. He was very clear that the exam was more important for him right now and he made a phone call to inform his family that he would come home after the exam.
COMMUNITY BASED STUDY CLASSES
Distribution of Children Attending Door Step School community based Study Classes
Ward Study Class Units Boys Girls Total Babasaheb Ambedkar Nagar (Punarvasit) 4 65 50 115 Babasaheb Ambedkar Nagar (Main) 4 89 39 128 A Babasaheb Ambedkar Nagar - Ext 3 48 30 78 Ganesh Murti Nagar 1 12 18 30 Garib Janata Nagar 1 9 20 29 Mahatma Phule Nagar – Nariman Point 1 17 27 44 Shivshakti Nagar 1 9 11 20 B Masjid Bunder- B Ward 3 34 37 71 C School On Wheels- I 3 43 37 80 E Boat Hart Street 2 24 14 38 Darga Galli 1 8 16 24 Hariyana Gate 1 15 12 27 New Tank Bunder 2 29 25 54
Grand Total 27 402 336 738
NB: A total of 1138 children attend Study Classes in Mumbai. Of these, 400 attend study classes conducted under the School Partnership Programme
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Standard Wise Enrollment
Language Std Enroll Dropped out in the course of the year ² Hindi 1st & 2nd| 373 29 3rd & 4 th 205 16 th 5 ¹ 24 Marathi 1st & 2 nd 88 4 3rd & 4 th 48 2 Total in 27 units 738 51
¹The Std. V Study class was introduced this year on an experimental basis. This was on request from a group of students who completed Std. IV last year and expressed the need for this service. ² these children have discontinued with the study class for various reasons like shifting residence, opting for private tuitions, etc. This does not indicate that they have dropped out of school
Other Relevant Statistics: 43% of the students have continued from the previous year and 57% are new entrants 72% of the children show an attendance of over 50% 44% of the students in the Study Classes are girls.
The concept of continuous assessment was introduced this year in Door Step School classes in the form of a weekly test. Of the 4 tests conducted in a class every month, they would focus alternately on the language and the maths portion covered in the preceding fortnight. Also of the 2 test on each subject one was to be in the form of a simple worksheet and the other would be an oral test, preferably with the use of teaching aids.
The table below shows the overall movement in the classes. The progress seen in the students attending the study classes is distinctly better than that of the students in the non formal education classes which are attended by the children who are working or for any other reason are unable to attend formal school.
Simple Type of Class Vocabulary paragraphs
NFE (Preparing for Std 3 & 4) Oct-07 12.5% 62.5% Mar-08 47.83% 73.91%
Study Class (Preparing for Std 3 & 4) Oct-07 47.62% 12.80% Mar-08 75.86% 75.86%
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Each year, for the large number of new entrants, the experience of being in a Door Step School class is a new one and almost all that is done in the class is novel and stimulating, a very important aspect of learning. Yet the Door Step School team strives to maintain a high level of interest to hold the children in class and maintain the desired pace of learning.
A number of puppeteering workshops with different groups of teachers and staff during the year lead to frequent use of puppets in the class, for entertainment and as an effective teaching tool.
Reading the newspaper once a week also evoked a good response.
A visit to local places of interest, e.g. The Police Station, in addition to the annual excursions. A visit to the Police station has an added advantage of removing the fear that children have of policemen, through an interaction with the policemen.
A walk through the community and a visit to the local grocery store or vegetable vendor is something the children do every day. Yet it is great fun for the children when it becomes a class excursion. With their teacher talking to tem as they move through, and being seen as a part of this big ‘important’ group, all add to significance of this neighborhood trip.
The excursion to Tikuji-ni-Wadi, and amusement park was the one the children enjoyed the most. This was anew venue introduced in this year. It will be considered for more groups next year. The one deterring factor in visiting this place is the distance. The very young ones are to use to long distance travel in a bus and offer suffer from travel sickness.
Another place of interest they visited this year was the Parle biscuit factory.
Adding a more hands on component to the curriculum, an effort was made in some classes to introduce embroidery and mehendi application. These are most appealing to the older girls, one of the main targets of the classes.
Workshops and competitions worked into the year’s schedule, help add zing. Some of these events are curriculum related while others like the Kite making workshop are linked to festivals. (More details in the section on the Community Learning Centre)
Using rewards to motivate children to be punctual for class attend regularly; maintain basic requirements of personal hygiene worked well in most classes. Putting up a chart commending these children, giving those stars, or a small token reward were the different methods tried out in different classes.
Where ever possible movies were screened for the children. While films from the Meena series continued to be among the favourites, ‘Tare Zameen Par’ was a great it with the children and teachers alike.
An exchange of teachers between classes- having someone new take class is always cause for anticipating something different as each teacher’s style is different.
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Awareness Sessions for relevant topics targeting both the students and their parents were also taken through out the year. Some of the topics addressed were early marriage, safety while crossing roads, substance abuse,
Problems Faced during this year Children coming from different parts of the country and speaking different languages, take time in adjusting to their new teachers and classes. This year there were 2 such groups, one who spoke Bengali and the other Tamil. Having team members on board who spoke these languages was helped these new entrants to adjust and settle down in class.
With the initiation of the BMC drive to remove slums and pavement communities from the metropolis, among the first to be targeted were those who had made their dwellings on the arterial roads of the city. Most of these families have been given alternative accommodation in Govandi, about 20 kms away from where they lived. For these families their children’s schooling suffered as the move was made in the middle of the academic year. A few of our classes had to be terminated because of this development. The possibility of starting a project in the new colony where these families have been rehabilitated is under consideration.
Children attending our classes are being approached by other organizations venturing into the field of education.
While it is a very significant development that more organizations are realizing the need for building an educational component into their services, it is probably the hard work that goes into initiating a new group of children to education and schooling, and probably their lack of expertise in the field that leads them to start working with groups that have already been ‘broken in’.
The students continued to benefit from a variety of extra curricular and co curricular inputs by participating in the making of the Hamara Akhbaar, attending weekly sessions at the Computer Centre, Community Learning Centre, and participating in events arranged by Door Step School and other fellow organizations.
Parents meetings also continued in all communities, where the teachers shared with the parents what their children had been doing in class and spoke to them on the importance of attending regularly. Aspects of common concern such as family health were also addressed.
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THE COMMUNITY LEARNING CENTRE (CLC)
Most teachers observe that attendance is best on the day CLC and computer centre are scheduled in their weekly timetable. That’s because it does not feel like going for class. As the CLC is close to completing its third year of existence, it is assuring to know that it has not lost its attraction for its clientele, the children studying in 20 Door Step School classes in the vicinity who frequent it weekly. “Timings are coordinated to make use of teachers and children’s time more effectively and avoiding wastage of time spent in coming and going from the centre.”*
Type of class No of Units Age Group M F Total Balwadi 9 4–6 yrs 118 130 248 Study Class 18 6-14 yrs 264 228 492 6-14 yrs 134 275 409 NFE Class 19 14+ yrs 17 2 19 Open Library Youth from Community 14+ yrs 10 3 13 Total 46 543 638 1168
The children get to do something different almost every time they go there. The hour the children spend at the centre is divided into 15 minute slots for story telling, reading, a game & song and sharing of information on a new concept. “Many of these are carefully thought out activities to promote reading and interconnections are deliberately highlighted by the staff directing the activity.” * The age group of the children varying from 4 years to 18 years, and performing at varied levels from preschool to Std. IV. The services / activities offered are modified accordingly.
At reading time, children have open access to the books that they can select for themselves from the shelves what they would like to read. The last turn of the month is usually devoted to watching an audio visual for a TV and DVD player. Be it books, games audio visuals or other materials, its selection is based on it’s to appeal to children. The CLC coordinator who is responsible for organizing and conducting the activities at the CLC as well as coordinating with other DSS teachers to ensure follow up of these activities. Teachers accompany children and also participate so they are familiar with the CLC and its functioning. To facilitate the follow up, 16 resource bags with toys and instructions have been prepared for teachers to take and use in their regular classes. These resource bags are changed after every 2 weeks.
The CLC also functions as a resource unit with specially prepared resource bags circulated amongst the teachers at different locations where DSS operates, so that the children have access to CLC material at various other times during the week as well.
The CLC indicates that children’s reading abilities and academic performance has improved, as have their confidence levels and interest in reading related activities. A change in attitudes and behavior is also observed, especially I the way children address and learn from new and varied material.
*From “Assessing Impact of ‘Two Community Learning Centres in Mumbai Supported Under the BCPT Grant and Review of the Proposal for Next Phase” Prepared By Reviewer, Dr. Suneeta Kulkarni
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“DSS engages in planning on a monthly basis so all the children are assured of exposure to all these activities through the month, with a planned balance between group and individual activities as well self directed/chosen as well as facilitator directed ones. The impact of this planning is evident not only in the children’s response to these activities, and the ability they demonstrate through their vocabulary and conversational/dialogue skills, but also through their ‘written’ expressions that are shared with the group through wall displays.”*
A number of extra curricular activities conducted during this year were routed through the through the CLC.
Through an initiative called Coast2Coast , they enjoyed a close interaction with a group of 25 volunteers, mostly university students from Singapore, who conducted sessions in craft, sports and dramatics with varied groups. The interaction ended in a grand finale showcasing their good work done with the children held at the Colaba Municipal School on December 7, 2008.
Katthababu conducted a puppet making workshop for a group of 36 children on February 23 and 24, 2008. He took the children through the process of making puppets, developing scripts around the puppets that they had developed and then performing with them. It gave the children quite a thrill, to be able to express them in this animated way.
The CLC Coordinator in turn took a similar workshop on April 15 -16, for a group of 42 children at Ward E, a community to distant from the CLC to regularly benefit from it. She was assisted by one of the older participants of the earlier workshop who had show a special interest in it. This group scripted their puppet show in their own mother tongue.
A Language Workshop was held at the Colaba Woods Garden and in the CLC premises on 19 Feb.08 by Mr. Rajiv Tambe, who has devised many an entertaining language development exercise. Through out the day 200 children, in batches of about 30, took part in an exercise that took them from making images out of their own thumbprints to stories developed around the images they had created, put down in a few sentences and then shared with the rest of their group .
They also partook in a small exercise in creative thinking where they were asked about the possible uses of a pencil other than writing with it. It was very entertaining, and each one tied to out do the other, e.g. one would hold it over his upper lip and make a moustache of it, another would use it as a back scratcher, a third positioned it as a flute.
Another outreach activity taken on June 10-11 with 86 children of Ward E was with the resource bags which contain a variety of games and puzzles and are in regular use in classes in the vicinity of the CLC.
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COMPUTER CENTRE
Students of Door Step School classes from the communities in the vicinity of the centre attend classes once a week at him Computer Centre. For them, a curriculum plan has been drawn out, matching the educational levels and needs of the beneficiaries with the educational software available at the centre. The curriculum, though is not followed rigidly, but is there to answer a most oft asked question “What next?” Door Step School teachers are encouraged to get familiar with what ever is available at the centre and make appropriate choices on behalf of their class.
Besides language (Hindi and English) and Math programs sourced from the market, a collection of curriculum related CDs made by the Azim Premji Foundation and some on Maths prepared by Mr. Raj Krishamurthy are also available at the centre.
Distribution of Students Attending the Computer Centre Type of Class No. Of Students Units M F Total Balwadi 7 109 111 220 From 3 Communities Study Classes 17 269 216 485 From 4 Communities Non Formal 17 135 269 404 From 5 Communities+ The Education Classes Domestic Workers’ Class* + The School On Wheels Total 41 513 596 1109 *The average of students of the Domestic Workers class is higher than those in the other Non Formal Education classes. They are also very quick on the uptake. Hence the focus in this class is on MS Office and typing.
From February to April, 2 batches (17 children) from the Colaba Municipal School came for class on Saturdays. As they were the students of Stds. IV –VII, they were introduced to MS Office.
Other groups of children who have used the services of the centre are 1) The Bal Samuha members who attend in 2 batches on Saturday. There were 22 children attending when the batches started but at the end of the year only 17 continue. These 14 are regular and have become quite familiar with computer use. Their course content includes Computer operation, an introduction to Windows as an operating system and MS Office.
2) A group of 5 high school students from the nearby Transit Camp, whose parents was very keen that their wards learn computers and requested that they be accommodated. As Saturday afternoons were most convenient for them they were merged with the existing Saturday batch from January ‘08.
3) 9 high school students from Ganesh Murti Nagar also joined the Saturday batches from March ‘08
The Computer teacher was given the opportunity to attend a 3 month course Diploma in Information Technology conducted at the Y. B Chavan Centre by CDAC. The Diploma helped give him more insight into computer programs already covered with students of the older age group and especially helped to strengthen the theory component which is necessary when taking the private batches.
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He used his upgraded skills to create modules for the various concepts introduced to the children in the balwadis. He was assisted in this venture by the balwadi teachers who helped him develop the content and lent their voice.
BAL SAMUHA
The spirit and the drive behind the Bal Samuha groups formed by past DSS alumni, strengthened over the year with a steady increase in the number of members joining the groups and the events and programmes they organised becoming wider in their scope, involving other organisations, creating better opportunities for producing more and more young leaders to spread the movement.
A new group was formed in Ward ‘E’ with a nucleus of six members out of total 12 members. The group is still in the process of being formalized. The other eight Bal Samuhas in the various communities are actively pursuing their goals and expanding their horizons, acquiring their individual identities in the process. The total number of members increased from 271 last year to nearly 380 this year.
The Bal Samuhas 2007-08
Name of Group Community Active Total Members Members Sankalp Ganesh Murti Nagar 2 10 Ekta Babasaheb Ambedkar Nagar (Punarvasit) 35 100 Maya Babasaheb Ambedkar Nagar (Ext) 9 65 Sanjivani Babasaheb Ambedkar Nagar 60 85 Roshni Shiv Shakti Nagar 5 15 Anmol Domestic Workers group 5 5 Challenger Colaba Municipal School 35 75 Golden Group Masjid Bunder- B ward 10 15 New Group Ward E 6 12 Total 167 382
An important event organised on the occasion of World Literacy Day, 8 September 2007, was the felicitation of students ( who had been initiated into the process of education) from all the communities who had passed their Standard X exams. Twenty five successful candidates were felicitated, while a large group of 130 Bal Samuha members attended the function. A cultural programme added enjoyment to the event. The felicitation event in 2008 will be the last to be organised with the help of DSS. From 2009, Bal Samuha groups would take over this responsibility.
A street play was an activity successfully organised by the samuhas. A workshop by Raju Shinde, member from Tilak Nagar, was organised on December 24 and 25, which was attended by 33 young members. Members who attended the workshop in turn trained other members. A month later, on 26 January 2008 a competition was held. There were 80 enthusiastic participants from across 7 groups who took part.
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The first prize went to a play performed by the Roshni samuha; the second went to Challenger and the third to the Golden group. The best performer would also get an individual prize. The Challenger group won even at the Zonal level competition. Three of the groups performed for students of the Schools on Wheels on 19 February. Performing in these plays increased the self confidence of young members significantly.
From January 10 to 12 2008, Nirmala Niketan’s College of Social Work helped to organised an awareness programme on relevant issues like Mental Health, Child Rights, Substance Abuse, Blind Faith and Superstition. Experts from many NGOs interacted with 150 participants daily. After initial reservations, many people opened up and shared their views frankly, including an alcoholic father and a vocal mother who became the catalysts for others to participate in a free and open manner about their problems.
A Leadership Training Camp was held at Khandala on April 12 and 13, 2008. The aim was to strengthen the Bal Samuha movement. Senior members acted as trainers for the new ones. Two trainers from ASMAE acted as facilitators as well as 5 DSS coordinators, to train 65 junior participants. The aim was to impart guidance on developing communication, decision making, team work, creative thinking. Ward E group took part for the first time.
The Youth Venture Challenge was won by 4 members: • Chaitanya, for promoting awareness of Child Rights through Community Library • Tayyapa, for promoting and maintaining Community Cleanliness, perhaps starting a Toy Library in the cleaned space • Geeta for promoting educational projects like DSS, motivating 4 other members to start a class • Ashok for promoting sports activities
Geeta and Ashok were roped in to train new Youth Venture applicants by imparting the insights they had developed. Geeta had the unique opportunity of making a presentation at New Delhi for potential donor agencies.
Some new strategies were discussed and it is hoped to adopt these in the coming year. Ekta group tried a new strategy. Instead of covering the one community as a whole, smaller member groups adopted one lane each, covering 20 – 30 homes in the process. Sixteen Bal Samuha members continue to pursue this aim actively and successfully.
Close cooperation and coordination between the groups can be considered an important development. Examples of this are:
• Rajesh of Maya group offered to take craft activities in Door Step School classes. He liaised with the teachers directly to make this possible and had the children creating their very own dolls, fans and trees • An Ekta AGM resulted in a group of newly trained foot ballers taking other members under their wing and training them • A Sanjivani group member, Ashok, undertook training for the new comers of the Roshni group
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• Members of the Maya group when preparing for their street play competition reached out to their more experienced brethren from the Ekta group, who willingly leant a helping hand despite their own tight schedules and forth coming exams. Collaboration wins over competition. • Members of Sankalp volunteered to run the door to door library community, successfully for the first time.
Three Bal Samuha members attended a training organised by ASMAE in Pune on 27 and 28 July on the issue of Life Skills. ASMAE members attended Bal Samuha meetings to get to know members and understand their needs. Leadership camps were organised with their help. A training camp for DSS coordinators was held from May 5 to 9 on topics like “Vision for Bal Samuha in Sync with the DSS Vision”, “Participatory Approach” and “Future of Bal Samuhas”.
The Bal Samuha members were also involved in:
• Running community libraries • Assisting with the community survey and numbering the lanes in their community • Identifying and working with a group of children who would join the Door Step School classes and BMC schools • Participating in the World Literacy Day Rally in the communities and performing street plays to build awareness on the issue. • Working with local mandals during the Ganesh Festival to organise awareness activities and competitions • Foot ball coaching and tournaments • Participating in a Cricket Matches • Participating in the Marathon • Drawing competitions • Career Counseling Sessions (conducted by resource persons from Institute of Technology • Helping with community based Eye Camps • Mentoring new members • Organising awareness (AIDS, Literacy) campaigns in their respective communities • Visits to the ward office, neighborhood police station, etc. • Visit to Exhibition on Azadi Express • Attended sessions on substance abuse, human rights, nutrition and other health related issues (many of which were organised by students of College of Social Work, NN) • Participated in Cultural, Sports, excursions, etc. organised by other organisations, viz. K. C. College, Down to Earth, Kala Ghoda Festival, Museum Society, Magic Bus
Future plans for the groups were discussed; among them chiefly was the aim to open bank accounts for members and the mentoring of newcomers to develop the movement further.
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SCHOOL BUS SERVICE
Door Step School, Mumbai now has a fleet of 3 buses and one van at its disposal for use as Schools on Wheels and/or conveying children to and from school.
That children were not enrolled in school because parents knew they would not have the time to drop and fetch them, and that once enrolled many did not attend regularly for the same reason, was a known fact. A school bus service could change this situation and affect a change in the school enrollment and attendance pattern in communities that were a ½ km or more away from the closest municipal school.
In 1998, with the introduction of the first School on Wheels, the school bus service was also introduced. The expected change seemed to happen in the first five years of its service with almost 300 children using this service annually. However, the number of children using the service have been dropping from the sixth year onwards, and the only consistent answer we have found to this drop in numbers is that now that older siblings are already in school the younger ones walk to school with them.
While the above explanation is true of the communities in Ward A where Door Step School has been working for 20 years, there was a demand for the school bus service from the parents of the communities in Ward E, where we started work 2 years ago. Therefore in 07-08, one bus was used for providing the school bus service in this area.
The children of this area attend many different schools and the service could not be provided or all. It was therefore decided through a series of parents’ meeting that as maximum children would be enrolled in the Byculla (East) Municipal School which housed both Hindi and Marathi medium schools and the school bus service would be started for them. Sixty six parents opted for this service and agreed to pay the nominal fee for it.
Though the children made regular use of the bus, only 17% of the expected fee was collected, compared to the 61% in Ward A.
That children who use this service are very regular in school still stands true is reflected in the table below.
Attendance Pattern of School Going Children Using the Bus Service Location No. of Above 80- Below School Bus Service Attendance in % Children 81% 20% 20% Attend Attend Attend 60% 56% ance ance ance
50% Ward A 143 85 54 4 38% 40%
30% Ward E 66 33 25 8 20% 10% 6% 0% 118 79 12 Total 209 Above 81% 80-20% Attendance Below 20% Attendance (56%) (38%) (6%) Attendance
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ENROLLMENT IN MUNICIPAL SCHOOL
At the start of the academic year 2007- 2008, a total of 556 children had been enrolled in formal schools, out of which 415 were enrolled in the Municipal schools and the rest in and private schools.
It is interesting to note that when a follow up of these children was done at the end of the academic year, it was found that 95% of those who had joined the Municipal were continuing to attend while only 82% of those enrolled in the private schools were still in school. It is usually the better motivated parents who send their children to private schools and therefore it is expected that a higher percentage remains in school.
It is also observed that children who have had a preschool experience and that those who are enrolled in school at the right age are more likely to be sustained in school This stands true as seen in the table below.
Follow Up Of Students Enrolled In The School In The Academic Year 2007-‘08 Enrolled from No. of Number Percentage Children sustained Sustained Enrolled Balwadi 416 393 94.5%
Non Formal Education Class 106 88 83 %
From the community- but not from 34 30 88% a Door Step School class 556 511 92%
In the academic year starting June 2008, 575 children were enrolled in formal school. The largest numbers of children entering school were naturally from the balwadi, but it is worth noting that the number of NFE students entering formal school has been substantial in the last 2 years. The number of students being enrolled from the School on Wheels has dropped, 12 last year and 18 this year. This is mainly because of the eviction of families living on pavements and stringent follow up by the BMC to ensure that they do not return. This is a move for the better for some of those who are given alternate accommodation.
In some communities, children who were being refused admission on the grounds that they did not have birth certificates. This is true of the English medium school which is already over crowded and uses the can which uses this measure to refuse some children. In such cases, contact was made with a notary and parents were assisted in getting affidavits stating the child’s date of birth. Such an affidavit is accepted instead of a birth certificate. Members of the Bal Samuha accompanied groups of parents to help them out with the proceedings.
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Students Enrolled In School 2008-2009
Location Balwadis Non Formal Education
M F Total M F Total Ward A 110 107 217 26 47 73 290+14* Ward B 8 29 37 9 13 22 59 Ward E 71 88 159 23 30 53 212 189 224 413 50 83 148 575 * These 14 children were from the community, but were not Door Step School students
While 80 students from Non Formal Education classes were enrolled in Std. I, 52 were enrolled in Stds. II to IV. One girl was enrolled directly in Std. V.
SCHOOL PARTNERSHIP PROJECTS
Door Step School partnership efforts with corporation schools began in 1999, when the project was introduced in the Hindi and Marathi medium sections of the Colaba Municipal Schools (Primary). In early 2003, the project was extended to the English medium school in the same building and, there after, in 2005-2006 the Janabai Madhavrao Rokde school was taken up. These years of experience helped us to build a good understanding of the needs of these schools and well as an understanding of the working of the Education Department.
Therefore, when the Mumbai Transformation Resource Unit (MTSU)* was looking for a partner to collaborate with on education, Door Step School was an obvious one. Our first contact with MTSU was in 2006, we were invited along with 4 other NGOs to draft a design to facilitate Public Private Partnership in MCGM run schools with the aim of ensuring quality education and improved infrastructure.
The school selected for this venture is the Jagannath Shankarsheth Municipal School because of our presence within the JSS Municipal School and a good rapport with existing team in the school. The school building has a total strength of about 600 students and is comprised of 3 schools, 1) a primary school up to Std. IV in 2 mediums, Marathi and in English, 2) a Marathi medium secondary school Stds. V to X, 3) an English medium secondary school Stds. V to X.
Door Step School’s role in this school was visualized differently for this school and went beyond offering a package of supportive services for the school. Emphasis would be on liaising between the school and Education Department to help meet the schools basic needs . The school is at present under staffed and an adequate number of teachers are the schools greatest need.
Mr. S. S. Shinde, the then Deputy Municipal Commissioner–Schools, articulated that Door Step School should play the role of facilitators encouraging the school team to enhance functioning in the school.
*The MTSU is a task force playing the role of a single coordinating body established to coordinate the work of the multiple government agencies responsible for various aspects of the city’s infrastructure. The MTSU has been established to take forward the complex agenda for strategic city transformation with vision of “Transforming Mumbai into a World Class City with a vibrant economy and globally comparable quality of life for its citizens”
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After much dialogue, the project took off with a workshop for the school’s teaching staff on 31st October 2007. The event was presided over by then DMC, Mr. Shinde, who ensured that all concerned members of the Education Department were also present. The agenda for this event was to orient those present to Door Step School and to what this project was about and to provide an opportunity to the teachers to share the problems they faced.
The design for the intervention, prepared after conducting a need assessment exercise, includes • Teacher training on classroom management and sound pedagogy. • A functional Library • A functional Laboratory • A functional Computer class
We have so far been successful in:
• Forming a school management committee which met twice, on February 8 and again on March 13, 2008. The Committee comprises of school heads, senior teachers, parent representatives and Door Step School representatives.
• Arranging parent’s meetings. One meeting called for the parents of students studying in Stds. V- VIII to orient them to the Red Dust Role Models* program and request their permission to allow the children to participate before and after school hours. It drew a very good response, as they had no such programmes before. Their major concern, however, was that something to be done about the lack of teachers in their school. They were aware that their children were not learning anything. They even offered to accompany the organization’s representatives to meet the concerned authorities.
• Arranging a 4 day event with Red Dust from February 23 to 26 was a great success. The excitement and energy experienced in the school was a first. Over 350 students of Std. IV to VIII enjoyed some outdoor activities, some music making and some classroom sessions.
Red Dust provided all sporting and music equipment required to conduct the programme, which they left behind for the school to use. Each participant was given a participation certificate and a cap & t-shirt. The participants and staff member were also provided with a healthy, vegetarian lunch pack on all the days of the programme.
*Red Dust Role Models Ltd is an Australian not-for-profit organization that uses the profile and influence of positive role models to deliver health messages and inspire healthy lifestyle decisions Role Models also promote education as a pathway to increased opportunities for personal development, employment and preparedness for community leadership.
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For the participants, the high light of the event was the involvement of the Indian role models- Vinod Kambli & R. P. Singh
In the other 2 schools, project is well established and things fall in place relatively easily. The proposed activities and services get implemented as planned. However, in this year with the appointment of Mr. S.S. Shinde as the DMC, came a number of changes in the Education Department. The Public Partnership Cell (PPC) was introduced and some changes were brought about in the hierarchy and structure of the department. This did cause some confusion for a time, but it did not directly affect our intervention and was sorted out in time.
Also, this was the first that the department had undertaken the responsibility of providing all schooling essentials to every student enrolled in corporation schools.
At the Colaba Municipal School which has a student body of 3515, a team of 19 members ensured the smooth functioning of the study classes, the library, reading promotion activities, as well as taking class for the primary section of the English medium school where there was a short fall of 7 teachers. The project at the Colaba School also includes a balwadi for children from the immediate vicinity.
At the Janabai & Madhavrao Rokde High School a team of 4 looked after the project with similar components. This school has a student body of 526. As there are an adequate number of teachers in this school no full time class teachers were deputed here.
The balwadi at the Colaba Municipal School was attended by 105 children, 73 of whom were in the senior group and being prepared for admission to Std.I. Out of these 73, were enrolled in school as planned. These preschoolers have such anxious parents that they demand homework from the teacher. This is despite the fact that many of them have not had the opportunity of schooling. It is the realization of the competition the child of today is going to face that creates this anxiety. The Door Step School team does try to address this issue through parents meetings; here the teacher explains the methods that she has used to help the children develop a good mix of knowledge and skills.
This year the biggest attraction in the balwadi was the bioscope, which was part of the educational material provided by Galli Galli Sim Sim. (More details on in the section on ‘Balwadi’)
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As per the annual plan a number of workshops and competitions were also organized in both schools. To give children a stronger foundation in academics workshops were arranged on Language, Math and Science by Door Step School trainers and resource persons from outside. These were activity based giving children a chance to learn ‘by doing and seeing’. Workshops on value education, aspects of personality development, and awareness sessions on relevant issues, art and craft were also interspersed through the year.
Children enjoyed and benefited from the workshops as is evident from feedback they shared: “The way my teacher taught me to solve the problems in geometry and math was simple and this increased my self confidence as I could easily solve the same”
“I found it interesting and now I can do problems using graphs correctly.”
“The topic of ‘Our Body’ raised my curiosity and interest as I could immediately relate to it. The models which we had to make increased my interest even more”
The study classes started as soon as the school reopened. Hence, the results were encouraging. In fact, 20 students from Std. I in the English medium school at Colaba and 12 students from Std. II to IV at the Janabai School achieved expected levels in the first half of the academic year and thereafter did not require this service.
Children were assessed at the start of the academic year to gauge their levels of learning. Their performance was tested at scheduled intervals to enable teachers keep track of the children’s progress. The one problem that was encountered was the lack of enough space for all the study classes and frequent adjustments have to be made.
Distribution of Students Enrolled In The School Based Study Classes Number of School Medium Classes Number of Students M F Total
English 8 104 73 177 Colaba Municipal School Hindi & 5 59 43 102 Marathi Janabai Rokde Marathi 9 69 52 121 Municipal School Total 22 232 168s 400
The Reading Promotion period was introduced in all schools to help enhance reading skills. This activity has been strengthened this year as ability to read and comprehend independently is a crucial skill in the learning process. One hour per week was scheduled for this activity. Both, the class teacher as well as the reading promoter noted the improvement in the performance of students.
The most memorable events of the year were the football and cricket match for the students of the Colaba Municipal School and the Janabai School, respectively. A unique feature of this was that girls also joined the cricket team. While children are used to playing these games at street corners, for most of the players, this was the first time
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they were playing in a competitive match. The winners received a trophy as well as individual medals. The children were overjoyed at receiving so many prizes and being treated to good food. This happiness will remain forever etched in their minds.
DSS had organized a coaching for football for 20 selected children out of 50 members of the Children’s Committee from the Colaba Municipal School. Every Friday practice sessions were held at Oval Maidan and attended regularly by the players. A lot more children showed interest but could not be accommodated at this stage. Later the football team participated in the intra organisational competition. Four Door Step School teams participated in the tournament. The Colaba Municipal School team emerged the winners, winning by 1 goal. The players were overjoyed at their win. The purpose of this match was to select players could represent the organisaton.
Seventeen Nanhi Kalis participated in the Dream Marathon organised by Project Nanhi Kali of the K.C. Mahindra Education Trust.
TRAINING
The Curriculum Development team has been traditionally responsible for the various aspects of curriculum building and for training of teaching staff. The team consisted for 4 full time members and 1 consultant.
In January ’08, this team underwent some change to become the Training Cell, with one of the more experienced full timers and the consultant staying on and the 3 others preparing for the role of the community coordinator, to fill an immediate need that will result from a reorganisation of the staffing pattern at field level. The Cell at its full strength will be composed of 3 lead trainers whose main role will be to design and impart training and 3 field trainers who will be the link between the training and the class at field level.
This change in the training team corresponded with some reorganisation in the staffing pattern that was to be introduced at the community level. From July ’08, a team of teachers and coordinators in the community responsible for 10 classes under them, with Coordinators playing the role of team leaders. The coordinators will be required to look into teaching content and methodology as well as the community related aspects of a class. The training team’s responsibility is now somewhat widened as they are also required to look after the training needs of the Coordinating staff, especially in view in their modified roles. Another change that is being introduced is that the teachers, who so far had a 6 hour working day, would be required to put in an 8 hour day, devoting the 3 working Saturdays for training. The 2 additional hours they would put in on week days will be dedicated to planning and completion of records.
The training team took on additional HR related responsibility, and created in depth job descriptions fro field level staff. These newly created job descriptions were then shared with staff members as part of their training.
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Of 37 working Saturdays of this year, 28 were devoted to teacher training. The main areas addressed were
• Continuous assessment • Setting a common timetable • Consensus on what basis selection of letter to be taught next • Conducting a pretest • Utilising the 8 hour work day • Non negotiable in a Door Step School class • Utilising the resources available in the Community Learning Centre • Selected components of Maths. Some of these were conducted by Mr. Arun Mavalankar of HBCSE. • Selected components of Hindi Grammar. These sessions were taken by Mr. Divyang Barot, a Hindi teacher.
As the concept of continuous assessment was formally introduced in this year with weekly tests being made mandatory, training during the first half of the year was concentrated on various aspects of these tests.
For the 22 balwadi teachers, there was an intensive 3 day training on language for conducted by educationist, Ms. V. Sahasrabuddhe in October. A lot of emphasis during this workshop was on how preschoolers learn.
On December 28, 6 balwadi teachers attended a workshop conducted by Galli Galli Sim Sim, the Indian offshoot of Sesame Street. As a part of their outreach programme, they have prepared some very attractive material for the young learner. This workshop was aimed at preparing teachers for use of this material which has been distributed to various NGOs.
Some sessions were conducted with the teachers and the coordinator in preparation of the proposed changes. These sessions were an effort towards involving al team members in understanding each others roles and in creation of the new job descriptions, mentioned earlier.
The sessions allowed the teachers to express • What inputs they need from their coordinators as support for their work • What they viewed as the role and responsibility of teacher coordinators and community coordinators
The Coordinators, too got an opportunity to share • What they viewed as the role and responsibility of teacher coordinators and community coordinators • What would be an optimum number of classes for them to look after
Trainings undertaken by the cell in the period between January and June 2008 For the Coordinators • Child development • Communication • Team building • Introduction to the Curricular Framework • Records we need to keep • Preparing for the BMC exam • Preparing the Master attendance (a class wise record created at the end of each academic year)
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For the Teachers
An intensive training program of six days each was organized for teachers of Balwadi, Study classes and the Non Formal Education classes. The training designed was very comprehensive with the entire teaching process and content being broken down step by step.
The Curricular Framework developed in-house for Language and Math was taken up in depth. These were amply supplemented by games and activities to aid reinforcement of the learning of the students. Exercises with the teachers were done at every step so that there is no ambiguity in teachers. Minute detailing was seen in all the sessions.
The content of the trainings focused on
• Getting acquainted with the curricular framework, and its application in class • Some components of Classroom Management • Optimum use of available resources • The team in the community
Highlights of these training sessions were that
• They were given a structure that balanced -physical and mental activity -styles of delivery -designing experiences that help construct knowledge, building on knowledge that a participant / student already knows • Processes that could be put to good use in a classroom were incorporated, viz. setting norms, scheduling time for recapitulating, • Creative sessions encouraged expression • Brain teasers recharged participants
The coordinators team was given the opportunity to learn computers at the Y B Chauhan Centre. They were enrolled for a 3 month certificate course (CCIT) which covered the basics of Ms Office and internet use. 15 coordinators took advantage of this offer and successfully completed the course.
Geared to meet the growing need for conversational English, Mr. Gurmitsingh Mahtab, founder of Queen’s English, offered his services pro bono for conducting series workshops with the teaching team as well as the coordinator’s team. Based on the premise that all team members had learnt English at sometime in their school life, he drew on what they already knew and gave them a realization of being familiar with the language and the confidence to speak it. Simultaneously, he incorporated language structure and corrected most commonly made mistakes. Besides learning English, the team also learnt a good bit from his methods.
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An Organisational Development grant from one of our funding partners gave us an opportunity to collaborate with Dasra, an NGO Consultancy As a part of this package
• one member of the training team attended a capacity building workshop • Two members of the Training Cell visited Vikramshila, and organization in Kolkata working in the field of education and having a very strong component of teacher training. The opportunity for this visit was offered as a part of the OD grant Door Step School received from the funding partner, Global Fund for Children.
Opportunity for Exposure
In October, a group of teachers attended a discussion on education chaired by Ms Suman Karandikar, followed by a demo on how to conduct class by Leelatai Patil. This event was part of a week long commemoration of educationist, J. P. Niak’s birth centenary.
Twenty teachers spent 5 days, December 23 to 28, in Jaipur, visiting a variety of field level educational programs. The teachers visited Bodh, Digantar Shiksha Evam Khelkud Samiti, the Jaipur Proudh Shiksha Samiti, the Ajmer Proudh Shiksha Samiti and had some interesting discussions with Mr. Ramesh Thanvi and others at State Resource Centre, Mr. Rohit Dhankar of Digantar.
Audiovisuals on alternative education ventures in other parts of the country were screened or groups of teachers. These included the documentary on Kannav in Kerela, an unconventional classroom in West Bengal, and vignettes from the Going to School in India compilation.
Training with Fellow NGOs
Other NGOs who had requested and received training from Door Step School were Aasra, BECC and Prem Sagar. The training offered to them was as per their requirements. With the teams from BECC and Prem Sagar, 3 day training was imparted offering them a mix of field exposure and discussion.
We were unable to accommodate requests from a few other NGOs in this year due to the internal overhauling we were preparing for.
Two members of the training team took sessions on teaching Math with in March with a team from the current teaching staff in Door Step School, Pune and again in April as part of a training program for new teachers.
A 2 days orientation visit was arranged for a team from Muskaan, an NGO working with marginalized children in Bhopal, MP.
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PROGRAMS AT COMMUNITY AND ORGANISATION LEVEL
An academic year at Door Step School is interspersed with a lot of extra curricular activities, some organized within the organization and others by fellow organizations. To give all students an opportunity to participate many of the events are conducted at community and class level, but larger groups get together twice or thrice a year.
Some interesting things the children got to do this year are:
“My Dream” was the theme for an art workshop where 50 children from Ward A and 91 children from Ward E from the NFE & Study Classes took part. While some painted their wish of becoming a nurse, others drew pictures of teachers, office workers and so on. It was amazing to see the talent of some of the children who produced fantastic pictures. Twenty nine selected drawings and paintings Removed photograph were prepared for a child art exhibition organized in New York USA as a fundraising event by Safar Trust on May 29, 2008.
• A group of volunteers from Coast 2 Coast, Singapore took various activities like art and craft, sports and dramatics with 80 children for a two week period from November 26 – December 7, ’07. Two groups with 40 to 50 children were engaged in sports and two group of 30 children participated in dramatics for two weeks. On December 7, an art and craft display was arranged with items made by the children. The dramatics group staged small skits which they had been taught by the volunteers. The school hall rang out in applause as everyone enjoyed the performances. The potential of the children came to the fore. The way the volunteers interacted with the children despite a language barrier in a new country is something worth appreciating.
• 40 School on Wheels students got to watch GOAL at Metro
• Students of 1 NFE /SC a week enjoyed interactions with students of Cathedral School
• 20 students School on Wheels who appeared for a BMC exam enjoyed a party at Gulshan-e-Iran Restaurant. It was a once in a life time experience for them, as they could order what they liked and as much as they wanted.
• 12 Students from the School on Wheels visited the Azad Maidan Police Station, where 2 regular children from each class were felicitated by a Police Officer.
At the Police Station, they had invited a member of the Crime Branch to talk to the children on Juvenile Crime and its effects on the children’s lives.
They spoke in a language the children easily understood and gave examples that had an impact on the children. The children opened up with many questions to which they were given answers and explanations that appealed to them.
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• To mark International Literacy Day on September 8th, the children took part in a rally that wove its way through the communities creating awareness of the need for education and encouraging parents to put their children in school. Besides the slogan calling usually associated with such rallies they stopped at predetermined points along their route and performed street plays.
• Sports day for Ward E was held at the Tata Grounds in February. A 113 children from the NFE and Study class participated in the event. Competitive events lined up for the children were race, passing the ball, crepe paper game, and skipping race. Children were enthusiastic and took part in all events. Prizes were given to the winners.
For the first time, a sports day for Balwadi children was also held in Ward E. Children formed two groups – Senior and Junior. Senior children had events such as Lemon Spoon, Balancing book on the head, Filling Sand in the bottle, putting the ball in the bucket while junior group competed in Frog jump, jumping out of the ring, walking on the Bricks. It was interesting to see even small children displaying a competitive spirit as evinced from their shrieks “I must come first” (“ Sabse pehla mujhe aana hai”)
• Through ‘Project Care’, an imitative of the social Service League at the St. Xavier’s College, the children for the Masjid Bunder community enjoyed a 2 day non residential camp in December. The students of St. Xavier’s had planned each aspect very thoughtfully and attended to the children with great care. They arranged for a magic show for them, took them for a visit to Traffic Police Garden at Nariman Point, held a sports day for them which included balancing book race, tug of war, and relay. Each child was asked to plant a sapling highlighting the need for greenery in the environment. Children were gifts items of daily need such as toothpaste, soap, comb and so on. Treated to good food and enjoying every minute of the time spent, the children came back highly contented. • The festivals children celebrated together were • The Ganesh festival, during which competitions like Rangoli & Carrom were organized in collaboration with the local Ganesh Mandals • Tilgul gatherings during Sakranti were arranged in all classes
Diwali celebrations were organized at multiple locations such as the CPRA gardens at Colaba, Tata grounds at Reay Road
The Balwadi children had a delightful Christmas celebration at Colaba Woods where they created their own music
On health related issues , we networked with G.T. Hospital, the Bachubai Ali Eye Hospital and Nirmaya, an NGO working on child health.
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Two groups of children from the School on Wheels were taken to G.T. Hospital for a check up and further treatment. • On October 12-13, ’07, 29 children from Wadi Bunder • On October 14-15,’07, 42 children from Fashion street and Crawford Market
A few children needed further treatment. One who had a cardiac problem was referred to JJ hospital for further investigation and 2 for TB were given the necessary treatment. Also, 2 children who were suspected of having AIDS, but when tested showed negative.
Eye Camps were organised at Babasaheb Ambedkar Nagar, Babasaheb Ambedkar Nagar (Ext) and Masjid Bunder in collaboration with Khan Bahadur Haji Bachu Ali Charitable Hospital. 625 Children from these and neighboring communities were checked at these camps.
The Nirmaya team arranged a check up for balwadi children and their parents in 4 Communities. They also offered immediate treatment and nutritional supplements. They conducted parent meetings and disseminated relevant information on health.
Awareness sessions conducted through the year focused on • Substance abuse • Personal Hygiene • Sex Education • Nutrition • Leprosy A session was conducted with a mothers’ group at the Babasaheb Ambedkar Nagar (Punarvasit ) on how to start and run a savings group.
On Women’s Day in March, the Door Step School team gathered at the Priyadarshini Park. The days program included discussions and games geared at remembering women we admire and on gender equality. The highlight of the day was an interaction with the Pink Ladies, the lady taxi drivers of Mumbai. Talking to them, listening to some of their escapades and finally climbing into their pink taxi and have their pictures taken was quite a thrilling experience for the teachers.
This year, we had students from Mumbai’s 3 social work institutes, as well as management institutes interning with us. The social work students were placed in all the wards and with a variety of projects. The events they plan, new resources they bring and the information they disseminate by of on going sessions with parents and children in the community are always a valuable contribution. The management students from IITM, were given assignment to work on some of the HR components for the organization.
A team of 15 lively volunteers from Singapore, mostly university students, enjoyed themselves with children from the Colaba Municipal School and from the communities. They were a well prepared team who spent 2 weeks engaging our different groups of children in sports, arts, and dramatics.
♦ NSS students of KC College & B. M. Ruia College ♦ Many other Volunteers who taught children at the JSS Municipal School
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Other Organisations We Networked with
♦ When Avehi organized a Candle March as part of the Shikshan Hakk Abhiyan (Right to Education Drive) Door Step School was represented by participated in 25 Children. Door Step has been a regular participant in their open house held every ♦ An NGO named BODH invited Colaba school students to perform in their Annual day programme. Our children presented two beautifully enacted plays – Living Tree and Birthday Party—which they had learnt earlier with the volunteers from Singapore. Both items were highly appreciated by the audience.
♦ Down to Earth invited Door Step School’s children to participate in a well organized sports event and later in the year, in a cultural event
♦ Magic Bus continued to train the children for Rugby and also involved them in adventure sports
♦ Rotary Club invited the children for the opening of a playground at Colaba Woods which they had revamped
♦ A group of 30 students from the School on Wheels enjoyed a party at MacDonald’s which was hosted by the Time & Talent Club ♦ Avalon & Dasra, our consulting partners, who have played a major role in designing the restructuring and strengthening Door Step School has been undergoing ♦ Ms. Padmaja Nair looked into and wrote about the workings of Door Step School for a Non-Government Public Action research project studying the relationship between the State and the NGOs in the delivery of basic services.
FUTURE PLANS To undertake partnership with a municipal school in the vicinity of the communities in ward E where we enroll a large number of children. To expand to Govandi where families of our students have been rehabilitated Replicate the Community Learning Centre at one or two other locations To expand School on Wheels programme to reach out children located in BPT area.
The expansion plans that have been put on paper as a part of our OD exercise, will be translated into reality such as creating financial manual, HR manual etc.
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Some pages from this year’s ‘Hamara Akhbar’s. The Hamara Akhbar is a monthly newsletter, a compilations our children’s contributions.
Removed Pictures
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DOOR STEP SCHOOL – PUNE
ANNUAL REPORT 2007-2008
INTRODUCTION
The years 2006 -2007 and 2007-2008 will stand out in the history of Door Step School as the years of tremendous growth at its Pune branch. This growth is mainly in the number of construction sites we covered (from 32 to 67) and the number of Municipal Corporation schools we worked with (from 21 to 76). As a result, the number of children we reached out to through these activities has also increased considerably. (Please refer Table no.1 for details) In last year’s report we had mentioned our intention to expand our work. We had also talked about the perspective plan that we were working on with the help of Avalon Consulting. We are still in process of finalizing the plan and the final blue print is yet to be ready. So from that point of view the growth we see today is unplanned though not unintentional.
JOURNEY TO EXPANSION
Expansion of work on construction sites (Project Foundation)
There were two major reasons for the increase in our work on this scale. In the year 2006-2007, Vibha, one of our funding partners, expressed willingness to support our expansion efforts. With this support assured, we began considering expanding in a planned manner. We started working towards this on two levels. Firstly, we started analyzing ourselves to identify areas where organizational structure needed some improvements, e.g. we formulated a steering committee for Pune. This, we thought would give us more stability and a broader base locally. The committee was formed of people who were acquainted with and interested in DSS and its activities since many years. We discussed with the committee the idea of expansion, Vibha’s offer to help, etc. and sought their advice and support for the new venture. They suggested that we make a perspective plan for the next five years before going for major expansion. The members strongly recommended that we take professional help to make the plan. Accordingly, we looked at different options and decided to work with Avalon Consulting. (Avalon is doing this work pro-bono).
We also discussed the offer and the consequent developments with the staff. The staff was excited with the thought of expansion. Vibha’s offer was interpreted as recognition of the work they were doing and the tempo started building up. The absence of any plan on paper or the difference between an offer and final commitment did not really worry them. And the ball started rolling.
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Table No. 1: Of Comparison Of Five Years In A Row
YEAR 2003- 2004- 2005- 2006- 2007 - 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008
Slum Sites 9 5 6 7 9
Construction site 8 16 32 50 65 Direct Education Pavement Dwellers 2 1 1 1 1
Road construction sites 2 - - - 2
Total No. of Locations 19 22 39 58 77
Balwadis 5 10 19 43 47
Study Classes 18 14 18 29 37
NFE Classes 14 21 37 50 64
Total No. of Classes 37 45 74 135 168
Locations Closed 2 2 3 8 16 (14%) (9%) (8%) (14%) (21%)
Classes Closed 5 6 6 14 22 (13%) (13%) (8%) (11%) (15%)
Children enrolled 1144 1190 2426 2799 4981
Children 691 670 1144 1399 2081 (50%) (42%)
Retained (61%) (56%) (47%)
School Schools With Reading 14 18 21 47 76 Intervention classes
Lending library in primary 10 14 18 21 47 section
Lending library in middle - 4 6 15 19 school section
Reading classes children 5453 6347 7114 15516 21756 covered
Lending library in primary 1849 2697 2846 3069 5623 sch. children covered
LL middle sch. children - 947 1201 3009 3115 covered N.B. Marathi is the Language of Instruction in both types of intervention
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Establishment Of Training Center, ‘Parivartan’
The thought of expansion highlighted the need for trained personnel, particularly the teaching staff. So we started working towards the establishment of a training center. Since we had shifted our focus to migrant population since 2003, and construction labor in particular, we felt the need for the a specific group-training module. A full time staff member spent nearly two full years (2004-06) working on the module and a manual for our specific training needs. Thus, we had the training module, manual and the material in place ready. We started looking for a funding partner for our training centre and Wipro Cares gave us the green signal to support us. The training centre was officially inaugurated in October 2007. (Pl. refers to section ‘Training Centre,’ Parivartan’, for details.)
Expansion Of ‘Project Grow With Books’ (Reading Classes And Related Activities)
The expansion of our work on construction sites (referred to as ‘Project Foundation’) was a result of our efforts and intention to expand. However, the expansion of Reading Classes (RC) was mainly a result of the interest shown by our funding partners in the Reading Class program. In the year 2006-07, we more than doubled (from 22 to 47) the number of schools covered under the RC program. Also, for the first time we extended our work outside the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) limits. We started working with Pimpri Chinchwad Municipal Corporation (PCMC) schools as well. This year we added 29 more schools (9 in PCMC and 20 in PMC) to the list.
REPORT
This report is divided in 6 parts viz. Direct Education Supportive Activities Project Grow with Books Other Activities Training, Evaluation and Monitoring Study Centers Training Publications Volunteers’ contribution Future plans
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Table No: 2: Activities At A Glance
No. of No. of classes No. of locations children enrolled
I Direct Balwadi 47 1704 education Study Classes 37 698
NFE 64 1678
Total 4080
II School Support Child Care Centers 20 901 Services Age Certificates (119) all centers 1458
School enrollment 288
School Transport For 16 locations 216
Take children for 58 249 External examination conducted by PMC
III School a) Reading Classes 76 schools of 484 21,756 Intervention Stds. 1 st to 4 th PMC & PCMC program b) Lending library 47 5623 (Project Grow Stds. 1 st to 4 th with books ) c) Lending library 19 92 3115 Stds. 5 th to 7 th
IV 1. Other Community Lending 14 4 212 activities Library
Reference Library 6 6 351
Computer Classes 2 10 153
Quest Visits 6 113
2. Training Teachers 87 (39 new & old 48)
Book fairies 166 (61 new, 95 old)
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No. of No. of classes No. of locations children enrolled
3.Publications A series of 3 work 3 books Books without 2 composite letters Story books My book 1 A book for coloring 1 Newsletters 2
During this year we reached out to a total of 29852 Children altogether. We reached out to 67 construction sites & 10 slums/pavement sites.
DIRECT EDUCATION
Our Balwadis (pre primary education classes), study classes for Stds. I and II. children and the NFE classes (non-formal education or literacy classes) are our direct education programs. Table no. 3 shows the number of children and the locations covered under these three activities during the year.
Table No: 3: Status Of Location Type And Enrollment Of Children Children No. of Number enrolled children in Program Location Type (no.) of through the the month of classes year May 2008
Balwadi Slum/Pavement (4) 4 99 76
Building/Road const.(67) 43 1605 618
Total 47 1704 694
Study Slum/Pavement (9) 20 306 226 Classes Building/Road const. (33) 17 392 221
Total 37 698 447 (64%)
NFE Slum/Pavement (5) 2 77 21
Building/Road const.(69) 62 1601 602
Total 64 1678 623 (37%)
Grand 148 4080 1704 (42%) Total
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As is seen from the Table 3, we have touched covered a little over 4000 children under through our educational programs. In addition, we provided Child Care facility to nearly 1000 children. Thus, a total of 5000 children benefited from our programs in this year. As we can see from the table most of these children are from construction sites. We will now see a more detailed picture program wise.
BALWADIS (Pre Primary Education Centers, 3-6 Year Age Group)
The Balwadis are a very important for our work as it gives us a chance to prepare the children for school at an early age, improving their chance of performing well later on. The objective is to motivate children early on to start and continue school as well as to prepare the child and its parents for education – discipline in school ways. Activities are both educational and recreational so it is easier for the children to cope with school later on. Amongst others, the concept of numbers is introduced and the children are prepared for writing by doing simple exercises, for example drawing shapes. When children attend our Balwadi groups regularly we can enroll them directly into Std. I at the right age.
This year we ran separate Balwadi classes on 47 locations, although children of the Balwadi age group could be found in 71 locations in all. This happens because on some sites the number of children is very low, and it is not practical to run a separate Balwadi class on that location. On such locations the children are taken care by an NFE teacher along with other older students.
Of the 47 Balwadi classes 43 were in construction sites, 3 in slums and 1 in a pavement community. 14 Balwadis were closed this year due to drop outs and merging of classes. The total enrollment for our Balwadi program was 1704. The total number of retained children was 694 i.e. 41%.
STUDY CLASSES
This year we covered a total of 698 children from 42 different locations under 37 study classes. The study classes are primarily meant for the 1 st and 2 nd grade children. There are occasions when some 3 rd grade children also attend the study classes but they are very few. For example, this year only 17 children from the 3 rd grade attended the study class. These children attend a study class with the children of the 2 nd grade because their level of learning is about the same. The following table gives us an overview of study classes
Table No: 4: Overview Of Study Classes SLUMS/ CONSTRUCTION TOTAL PAVEMENTS SITES No. Of Locations 9* 33 42 No. Of Classes 20 17 37 Children Enrolled 305 392 698 Children Retained 226 (75%) 221(56%) 447 (64%) *Out Of These 9 Communities Only 1 Is A Pavement Community.
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As we can see from the Table no. 4, the study classes are distributed evenly between construction and slum locations. In fact, in 3 (Range hills, Shivaji Nagar and pavement community near Chaturshrungi temple), out of the 9 slums and pavement communities, we have almost phased out the NFE activity. We are running only Balwadis and Study Classes. We can say that here we have achieved our goal of total enrollment by admitting all the eligible children in school.
RANGE HILLS COMMUNITY The management of an ammunition factory, which is based in the neighborhood, runs the Range Hills Community school. It comes under Zilla Parishad and not under the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC).
The management of this school has always been very supportive and welcoming. This year they offered their vehicle to provide school transport to children of Range Hills. Nearly 60 children are provided the transport daily. DSS contributes Rs.100 per day for fuel costs while they take care of the vehicle, the driver and maintenance. They have also given a room for use as a pre-primary center. Currently we do not hold any classes there other than the one for older girls from the Range Hills community. We take all the children to the school and conduct Balwadi and Study classes in the school itself.
SHIVAJI NAGAR COMMUNITY Shivaji Nagar is the oldest community (1999) we are working in. In the initial years we had to struggle to put children in school. We faced The resistance from the parents as well as the teachers. Teachers anticipated these children to be undisciplined, irregular and unclean and were, therefore, not prepared to have them in class. These were children who added to the family’s kitty by begging at traffic signals. In the initial period we even provided lunch to the children as an incentive to attend school regularly. Almost all eligible children are since enrolled in PMC schools. A couple of years back 5 children from Shivaji Nagar were admitted to Ankur (a private, integrated school) along with 8 others from Laman tanda. Out of these 13 children, 8 are still continuing with Ankur, 3 from Shivaji Nagar and 5 from Laman tanda. Last year we have admitted 13 children in pre-primary. Three children passed with Distinction. Another 3 children passed in First class and 2 children passed in Second class. One student, Akshay Kamble, got scored 81% in the 6th std. exams.
CHILDREN FROM CHATURSHRUNGI PAVEMENT
We have been working for a long time with this community. This is a group of pavement dwellers who reside on the pavement outside Chaturshrungi Temple on Senapati Bapat Road. The children kept on changing but the activity continued. We started with a short duration day camp for the children during the Navaratri festival. Later, sometime in 2002 we started taking regular classes for these children in our School on Wheels. This class ran for about a year or so and after which the Chaturshrungi Temple Trustees gave us the permission to hold classes in the courtyard outside the Ganesh temple within temple complex. While we were still in the Temple complex we arranged for the children to have 2 baths per week at the public bathing facility in the vicinity. The first session was a real experience! The children did not even know that a towel is to be used to dry oneself after the having a bath!
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The next step forward was to shift the class to our Ernst and Young Study center at Shivaji Housing society. Children were first very happy to go there and were excited to see a real house with rooms, windows and doors from inside. But the minute the teacher closed the classroom door, they panicked and started howling. Gradually, of course, they got used to the surroundings and started mixing with other children there and started participating and contributing towards the celebrations like Dahi Handi which children would plan for themselves.
This year for the first time we were successful in enrolling 6 children in school. However it was not enough to enroll them in school, provide school transport and give study support through study classes. We literally had to go to their homes, wake them up, get them ready and take them to school. They would still appear unkempt and unclean once they entered the school. The teachers as well as other children would keep some distance from them. The poor children did not understand why they were considered dirty even after all the trouble they had taken to clean themselves.
Their interest in school gradually started waning. They started running away from the school mostly after the lunch break. They could sit through the day only if our teacher sat with them in the class. It is difficult to say why they started doing so. We feel there could be multiple reasons for their behavior. The novelty of the experience faded away. The children were not fully accepted at the school.
The fear that their parents would forcibly be shifted to some other location by the police and that they would not be able to find them on return. Since the road construction work was in full speed around the area they were staying the police would shift the pavement dwellers from one place to another almost every day
School was near from their residence and hence running away was easy. Whatever may be the reason the school experiment was not really very successful. We will keep on trying though and wait hope for the success.
Attendance pattern and performance level of Study class children The children who attend study classes generally do well in schools. The following table shows the level achieved by the children of 1 st & 2 nd stds in the month of March 2008.
Table No: 5: Comparing Door Step School Children’s Performance With School Average: 1st *PMC/PCMC 2nd *PMC/PCMC Average Average Alphabets complete 86 61 100 87 Matras complete 59 24 90 59 Jodaksharas complete 37 8 82 31 Proficient in Reading 14 NA 65 NA and writing *We have taken these averages from our reading ability test results. We give this test for our Reading class program twice every year in schools where we run the Reading Classes. This year we have covered 76 PMC and PCMC schools. We do not have data on PMC & PCMC schools on reading and writing proficiency .
We can see from the above table that the inputs we give are useful to improve the performance. However, such comparisons are rather deceptive. If we look at the results without any comparison there is a great scope for improvement. The levels that our children have achieved in Std. II. should have really been achieved in the Std. I itself.
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When we examined the reasons for such low performance we realized that the low level of attendance is probably the major reason for low performance. Table 6 gives the attendance pattern during the year.
Table No 6: Attendance Pattern During The Year Attendance in days 1st std 2nd std Total 75 and less 49 44 93 76 to 150 116 99 215 151+ 65 74 139 Total 230 217 447
Study classes functioned 218 days during the year. This is the class attendance. But we can safely assume that this is their attendance pattern for school as well. Although, we primarily provide school transport for safety reasons, we hope that the provision of transport would help improve attendance. We provided school transport to 337 children and the remaining 110 walked to school accompanied by a responsible adult as they lived close by.
When we compared the attendance and performance of these two groups, we did see a higher level of attendance among children covered by school transport. However, the difference is not really striking. It is just a 10% increase. The difference in performance of these two groups is proportionate to their attendance. Thus we can say that performance is directly related to attendance. This is obvious but as in many other things we often forget to keep the obvious in mind. We also made the same mistake. All these years we have been emphasizing on performance. Attendance records were maintained and performance was examined in relation to attendance but we have not specified ‘improvement in attendance’ as one of our goals. We have realized this in our annual review meeting this year. This year we will work on improving attendance.
NON-FORMAL EDUCATION (NFE) OR LITERACY CLASSES
A total of 1604 children were covered under 64 NFE centers during this year. All except two of these centres catered to construction labourers’ children. These children came from 75 different locations, 4 of which were slum locations and the remaining 71 were construction sites. The number of locations is more than the number of NFE centres because on some sites there are only a few children, 4 or 5 for example, and running an independent center there is not viable. We, therefore, collect children from such locations in a central location and run a class. For example, at Limbajai temple, off Baner Rd. We collect children from six to seven locations along the Baner Rd area and run their class on the temple premises. This year we had two such centres, one at Limbajai temple, off Baner Rd. (The temple is a private property of Mr. Bhumkar who has allowed us the free use of the premises for since the past five years.) and another at Golwalkar Guruji Prathamik Vidyalaya, a PMC run in Aundh. PMC has allowed us the use of a room in this school on at a nominal rent. We are holding classes here for more than two years now).
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Generally, all our classes are held in labour camps or at construction sites where a location, a tin shed or a room, is provided by the builder. But when such a facility is not available (mostly due to the delay in procedure but sometimes due to non cooperation) we start our classes in School on Wheels. This is the most important use of School on Wheels facility for Pune project. During the year we used School on Wheels on 4 different locations (working on 2 locations at a time) covering about 75 children.
Attendance pattern and performance level of NFE class children
A total of 623 children were attending NFE classes in March ‘08. The data we present here is about these 623 children.
NFE classes were open for 218 days in the year. However, the number of working days are different per class. This is because all the classes are commenced and terminated at the same time. The opening as well as the closure is not in our control. As soon as we find a new construction site, in the area we have selected for our operations, we start a class there. And when a site is completed and the labor move out we are forced to close down the site. Also, even if the site is not complete or closed down the labor may move in and out according the needs of the site. The different labor groups have different skills and they are shifted from one location to another as per the requirements of the construction work. This results into high rate of drop out and low level of attendance and performance. The movement of the labor is something we can do anything nothing about. We can only deal with the group of children who are on the site and yet are not attending classes regularly. The two main reasons for irregular attendance are, responsibility of household chores such as washing, cleaning and filling water and lack of easy and regular access to water. Because of this children come late or leave early from the class. Another important reason is the task of baby sitting. There are so many adolescent girls and boys who are engaged in this task. As is the popular belief they are not necessarily the siblings of the kids that they look after. They are often children of some relative of the parents e.g. a brother or sister or even a cousin who has been brought by the family for looking after the children. Running a crèche for these children solves this problem to a certain extent but not completely. This is more so because the crèche as well as the NFE class is always in the same or adjoining room. In the beginning the baby sitter is not even willing to leave that child in any other person’s care. And even if s/he does, s/he is constantly worried about the younger one and is intensely attentive to the kid’s needs. Naturally they cannot then devote their full attention to what is happening in class.
We have to work with these and such other practical difficulties on one side and the short duration of stay with us on the other side. We have to look at table no. 7 keeping all the above constraints in mind.
Based on our experience we have figured out the number of days required for achieving a particular level while learning to read and write. As we have seen earlier the levels of reading and writing are
Level No. of days Learning the alphabet 45-50 Learning all matras 51-90 Learning composite letters 91-120
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Thus we expect a child to be reading and writing well in about 120 days. Our attendance records show that very few children have attended the classes for more than 100 days. There are two reasons for this low attendance figures. We enroll as many children as possible in main-stream school, and this we do even in the middle of the academic year, thanks to cooperation of the Education Board of PMC. Once we admit a child in school he is transferred to our study classes and stops attending study NFE classes. Therefore, there are only a few children who attend NFE classes for more than 120 days or six months or so. Second reason of course is moving out from the site and joining the drop- out group.
In Table no. 7 we have divided the children in three groups, those who have attended the classes for less than 50 days (because to complete alphabets an average child takes minimum 50 days) and who have attended the classes for more than 50 days and the ones who were present for 100 days and more. We have shown their performance as against the attendance and as against the expected level. The picture is as shown below.
Table No. 7 : Attendance and Performance Levels Days of attendance 1-50 50-100+ 101 + Level % % % Learning the alphabet 75 33 6 Learning Matras 19 51 28 Learning composite letters 6 16 18 Completed the course Nil Nil 48 393 126 104 N=623 (100) (100) (100)
The above table shows that the majority of the children have low levels of attendance but if we look at their performance visa-vis their attendance most of them are achieving the expected levels of learning. They are not stagnating. Only 33% (42) of those who have attended for more than 50 days have failed to achieve the expected level. There are a few children (7 in number) who are still learning alphabets even after attending the classes for 100 days or more. These are the slow learners and we are planning to send them to special schools in future. The children who are still learning Matras (29 in number) need to be given some tests and then decide a plan of action for them.
This will be a new activity, which we might undertake in the coming next academic year. Here again we come to the same conclusion that attendance and performance have direct relationship and we have to now concentrate on improving attendance.
Rate of retention As we can see from the Table no. 3 the retention rate of children attending school is far higher than those who attend NFE classes (64% as against 37%). Within the group the children from slums are less likely to drop out than those from the construction sites. The reasons of course, are different for both the groups. Children from slums normally leave due to the lack of interest or because they have joined another tuition class. However, children from the construction sites drop out due to the change of residence.
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Efforts to keep track down of the children Self Addressed Post-cards Keeping track of these children is always a problem. We have been trying out different ways of doing so. For example, few years back we had given all our students self- addressed post cards and requested the parents to post those back to us stating their new location when they moved. This experiment was a failure as almost no body sent the post card back. Disheartened, we discontinued the distribution of post cards.
Seeking help of Labour contractors We then concentrated on developing relationship with the concerned labour contractors, who we were informed were the only ones who could tell us about the movement of the labour teams. The relationship worked fine so long as we were in direct contact with them. But once the teams moved out of the site that we were working on, the contractors would just refuse to take our calls, thanks to the facilities like the display of caller ID. So that channel was also closed and we were left guessing where our children could have gone. The builders or site supervisors etc. are of no help in this matter.
Teaching children to call us from the new location We have then thought of actively training the children to call us from the new location and give us the address of the place they have shifted to. The training is mainly about how to tell the address and the landmarks of the location they are in or tell us the number of the telephone booth they are calling us from. This is the first year of this experiment and the experience is encouraging. We receive quite a few calls from the children. Consequently, we could help 56 children to get admitted to the school in their new locality. The most important point to note is that in more than 75% of the cases we only guided the parents on phone and they did the rest and gave us the feed back. Our supervisors needed to visit the schools or the locations only for 12 children. Four out of the 56 children were admitted to our own NFE centers close to their new locations.
Distribution of ‘My Book’s ‘My Book’ is a specially designed book for children to take home and take with them wherever they go. The purpose of distributing the book is to make children, and mainly their parents, more independent regarding school admissions. The book contains the child’s name and photograph and other personal details such as age and height. There are pages where the child can draw and paint and do other fun activities. The most significant pages are the ones on which we stick a copy of the child’s age certificate, his progress report and most importantly the area wise list of phone numbers of all the ‘Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan’ (Education for All) centres all over the city of Pune. We obtained this list from the Pune Municipal Corporation and we are thankful to them for making it available to us. The book was distributed in the parents’ meeting explaining them its use and purpose. We explain to them that even if they could not read the phone numbers, they can show the book to somebody on the site and get the required information and do the follow up. Parents look very pleased to receive the book and some of them even offered to get the photos of their children, however, since this is a new experiment we do not know how far it will be successful in meeting its objectives.
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Are we making impact? In June 2006 we initiated our first centre on Sinhgad Road. The centre was started for the children of the A.R. Construction labourers who worked on the road and was situated in their camp near the Wadgaon bus stop. These children, like many of our other students are originally from small villages in Maharashtra and Karnataka, whose parents are illiterate and they are the first generation in their families to go to school.
We commenced with an NFE and a Balwadi class in July 2006 and ran the classes for ten months. After examining the children’s level of knowledge, we decided to let them appear for external examination of the Mahatma Phule Yojana (Government Scheme). All of the 11 NFE students appeared for the examination of which 10 took the Std. I examination and 1 took the Std. II examination. Due to their hard work and perseverance all of them passed. We also helped the children obtain their age certificates and thereafter we enrolled the children in a Pune Municipal School no.. Number of the school is 203 & 205. The first time the children were taken to the new school, the PMC teachers refused to enroll them in 2 nd and 3 rd Std. II & III. Instead, they advised us to enroll the children in Std. I although they had certificates to prove that they had successfully completed Std. I. However when the teachers got acquainted with the children and realised their skills and abilities they were permitted to enter the Std. II & III.
After enrolling the children in school, we converted the NFE class into a Study class. From June 2007 we ran two classes: a combined study class for Std. I & II and a Balwadi. Our teacher often visited the school to discuss the performance of the students who were very regular in their attendance. Our teachers have kept a good relation with the school teachers who are happy to have our children. One of our students, Ravi got, got a first prize in a Rangoli competition and Reshma was ranked first in her class in every test they had.
On January 28 2007, the Municipal Corporation destroyed the huts of these people, as they were on Government-owned land. Many of the families were forced to move, some to different other places within the city while the others to a completely different city. Our staff visited some of the places and found the 7 children.
All this chaos happened just a few days before the semester exam which took place on the 2nd to 6th February. Since the children were quick to tell us about their situation we were able to make special arrangements for 4 children to stay with relatives – against an arrangement of food – for the examination period. Hence, all the 7 children were able to appear for this examination.
Unfortunately, just a few days after the exam many families moved away and we were able to find only five children from four families. Two families in Kalwade, one in Chandan nagar and one in Undri. (Raja Rama Lashkare’s father enrolled him in a Municipal Ccorporation school in Chandan nagar after they moved to the another place)
Looking for a long-term solution for these children, in the longer term we searched for other schools that they could attend. For the three children in Kalwade we located a private school approximately 2 km from their new homes and started discussions with the principal about enrollment. However, after consulting further with the parents, they told us they were only staying in the area for another two weeks after which they did not know where they would go. As some of the children’s relatives were to live in Kharadi for a minimum of two months we decided to enroll them in this area. Since the
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Corporation schools in Kharadi are very far away from the relatives’ houses we decided that the two children (children (Gidappa Timana Lashkare & Irappa Timana Lashkare) would attend classes in a private school around ½ km away called Sundarbai Marathe Vidyalay. Our representatives met with the Principal requesting her to give permission for 2 of our children to attend school. This was granted. The openness and acceptance met by our students in school gave us great pleasure. Our students were provided with proper school uniform and the other students were very cooperative which reduced the chances of our students dropping out. The last one of the three children (Bhima Irappa Dandagule) in Kalwade stayed there and attended a type of Balwadi where he studied on his own.
The children’s final examinations were held from April 3 rd to 12 th . All of them, including those who had attended classes in other schools had to appear for the examination in the PMC School in Wadgaon. But since their relatives were no longer there it was very difficult for us to arrange for the children’s accommodation for the period of their examinations. Finally, we decided to have the children stay with two of the staff members from the Study Centres in Dattawadi. All our staff members contributed in taking good care of the children. We made arrangements for their meals as well as some snacks and made sure the children were transported safely to and from the centre as well as to their school. In all, three children from Std. II were with us for one week. Subhash who was enrolled in Std. III stayed with us for 10 days. In addition to the Std. III exam, in which he scored 76%, he also sat for the Std. IV external examination which he passed with a second class.
Looking at the difficulty the children have to face due to the constant moving we are trying to find a place for them in boarding schools.
In June we enrolled 4 children in a boarding school. But the children witnessed certain cremation rites done in an empty ground near the premises of this school. The children got distressed, in addition certain miscreants broke a child’s bag and stole some of his things. The children left that location due to these two incidences. We were looking for a suitable school for these children, but the parents took initiative and admitted these children in PMC schools located near their residence. Hence of these 4 children, 3 have been admitted to school in at Vadgaon Sheri and 1 child has been admitted in a school at Hadpsar.
In June 2007 we had enrolled 12 children in school and now only five children are able to continue their education. Unfortunately, we are not able to reach all the children who went to other areas and outside of cities after they migrated. The most important thing was the parents enrolled the children in a Municipal school. This is the first generation of education in their families. Parents are interested in educating their children. This incident represents a dynamic change in parents view attitude. We only introduce the education system to the children. They are still continuing their education because of their own will to study and with the help of their parents. But this happened only with 5 of our children, still 7 lost their opportunity for education.
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Removed picture
Table No. 8: Result Of Examination In April 2008
Name of the student Std. Exam result Irappa Timana Lashkare 2nd 99% Bhima Irappa Dandagule 2nd 78% Subhash Pawar 3rd and 4 th 76% and 48% Irappa Timana Lashkare 2nd 88% Raja Rama Lashkares 2nd 76%
SUPPORTIVE ACTIVITIES
Child Care Facility (CCF) For Children below 3
The childcare facility was mainly started to take care of the younger siblings of the NFE students. At construction sites, both of the parents work, so the responsibility of taking care of the younger children often falls on the older ones. If there is a younger sibling to look after, it is not possible for the older child to attend school. Therefore, it becomes imperative for us to take care of the young ones too. Whenever possible, we arrange for a separate room or at least a wall between the class and the CCF. As the children are with us for such a short time, it is important that the learning happens as efficiently as possible and without too much distracting noise from siblings. Even if we cannot provide a separate facility, we still have a separate teacher to take care of the children. This year, under the childcare facility, we covered 901 children. While these children were from 47 locations, only 20 classes were run exclusively as CCFs. This is so, because often, there are only a few children on one location and hence it comes under the Balwadi or is merged with another CCF on a nearby site.
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Age Certificates
Most of the children from the construction and slum sites do not possess birth certificates or other official identification such as age certificates. Although an age certificate does not have to be presented during admission to municipal schools, it is required along the way. One must also have an age certificate to get a rationing card from the PMC. Furthermore, the certificate is valid in other states in case the children’s families migrate, which happens regularly. In response to this, we have made it a policy to obtain age certificates for all of our NFE and Balwadi children above the age of three. When the document is obtained, we give the original to the parents, put a copy in the new My Book which the children bring with them, and keep at least one copy with the organization at the main office. This year, we obtained 1458 age certificates for children enrolled in our programs at 51 locations.
School Enrollment
In June, we enrolled as many eligible children as possible in the PMC schools. We enrolled 288 children in school; among them 76% were retained (219 children). Children, whose age qualified them for entry Std. I were enrolled accordingly. The children passed the external exam for a given level, they were in the next standard. Every year there is an increase in the number of school enrollment. Normally, we only do enrollments in June, but this year we had two rounds of enrollment: one in June and one in November. This includes all the children of 6 to 8 age group. Most of these children are admitted to Std. I. Children who are with us for sometime and who have passed the external examination held by PMC in the month of April are admitted to Stds. II, III, etc. according their eligibility. The School admissions are normally done from June through August. But this year we admitted a few children in the month of November also. This became possible because of the cooperation from Mahatma Phule Shikshan Hami Yojana officials.
Door Step School won the first prize from the PMC under the Mahatma Phule Shikshan Hami Yojana of the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyaan for being the organization with the largest number of school enrollments in Pune
Transport Facilities
This year 403 children used the facility from 23 locations. Making provision for school transport for children is an essential supportive service particularly in Pune because of the heavy and undisciplined traffic in the city. We use our own vehicles as well as auto rickshaws. Transport is needed for bringing the children to municipal schools as well as for collecting them from different construction sites to one location for conducting classes. This becomes necessary when the number of children at a given location is rather small and we can save resources by transporting them to a class running nearby. It is also an alternative to the School on Wheels when builders do not provide a safe space for classes. This year, we have used our School On Wheels bus, a Tempo Traveller, and one van for school transport. Additionally, we hired five auto rickshaws, which is the most common form of school transport in Pune.
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External Examination
PMC holds external examinations for Stds. I to VII every year. These examinations are meant for the children who do not attend regular school. The PMC gives the mark list and certificate of passing to successful students. It is our practice to help our NFE students to take the examination approximate to their level of learning. Successful students are subsequently admitted to school in the month of June.
These examinations are scheduled in the month of April. Our experience shows that quite a few children go back to their villages before April as Holi and such other festivals fall in the month of March or early April. This year we have requested the PMC and MFSH Yojana authorities to prepone the exams so that many children who miss the exams will be able to take them and get the certificate and mark list. The MFSH Yojana authorities expressed their inability to change the schedule but gave us an option of holding the exams ourselves and submit the answer papers and mark lists to them for checking.
Accordingly we planned the examination of Stds. I & II level in the month of February itself for nearly 200 children. The examination was scheduled for February 25 but due to unfortunate political events. The schedule was disturbed and needed to be preponed without much notice. About 150 children appeared for the exams as other children had already moved out of the city. The exams were at Range Hills Zilla Parishad School, both question and answer papers were examined by the PMC and mark lists and certificates were given to the successful candidates.
The authorities visited and inspected the examination hall and the process. A total of 101 children passed and 43 children failed. Thus, 70% of the children passed. Fifteen out of the 43 children who failed took the examination held by the PMC in the month of April. A total of 105 children appeared for the April exams. Although majority of these children appeared for 1st and 2nd std. exams a few appeared for 3rd and 4th also. Here also, the percentage of passing was 71%. But if we look at the Std. I results alone, we find that 76% students passed the Std. I exams.
PROJECT GROW WITH BOOKS (Reading Classes and related activities)
The Beginning The Reading Class (RC) program was started in 1999 covering 10 Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) primary schools. The program targeted Stds. I to IV children of these schools. However, before the initiation of this innovative programme Door Step School was already running mobile library in certain communities off Karve Road, from 1993. It was also running study classes in two PMC schools (Khilare and Deendayal) during the same period. These study classes were started on an experimental basis and they were discontinued after 2 years. But the community library still continues.
The experience gained while conducting slum libraries and study classes led to the introduction of Reading Classes. For example, the community library was used by kids who could read well, but the kids who could not read, did not come forward to take books. It was also seen that there was a significant difference in the number of boys and girls borrowing books. The girls were borrowing considerably less. While conducting
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study classes based in schools, we got the first hand experience of the much talked about lack of reading skills of children studying in public schools. We also could see the major reason for this deficiency. These children have almost no access to any books other than their text books. They have no opportunity to hone their reading skills. Our Reading Classes are designed to provide this opportunity. Our community library program is also started with the same objective in mind. But as experience showed us, community libraries do not help those who are just beginning to learn reading. However, reading classes do help neo literates in honing their reading skills. Reading class program addressed both these problems. By working directly with school children from Std. I onwards we could reach out to children who were just beginning to read. The group is captive and the gender gap is not further widened as it happens in the community library program where membership is voluntary.
We started Reading classes in 1999 and in 2000 we introduced the lending library in those schools in which we were working. Later in 2004, we started the lending library for the middle schools (Stds. V to VII), which are housed in the same building. The lending library for the higher standards was started because the children of Std. V asked for books. They were already used accustomed to borrowing books to take home and read. The reading habit was already inculcated. The demand was the consequence outcome of our work with them in primary schools. We did respond to their demand and are continuing with this program as well. We also grouped the three (Reading Class and Lending Library in primary and middle schools) programs together and renamed the project ‘ Grow with Books’ .
Reading Classes In 1999, this program was started in 10 PMC schools. It grew steadily through the years. It was extended to Pimpri Chinchwad Municipal Corporation (PCMC) schools in 2006. We started working in this year itself, which is another dimension of to our expansion. In 2007 we worked for the first time in 2 private and 1 Zilla Parishad school along with the PMC and PCMC schools. The children of these schools start taking lessons in Marathi language from Std. III onwards. So our program there covers children in Stds. III & IV. In terms of skills in reading Marathi they are more or less equal to Stds. I to IV of Marathi medium schools. This project has grown considerably in last 8 years, which can be seen below:
Growth Chart No. of Schools
140
120 3
100 53
80 3 PRIVATE 60 29 PCMC PMC 40 0 20 65 44 20 00 00 0 00 0 0 0 18 21 21 10 10 10 10 14 0 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 Year
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Reading Class Program
Once the schools are selected, each standard is allotted one Reading class per week. The class teacher is usually present in the classroom; a few of them even participate in the activities. The activities of the class are conducted by Book-fairies, (the field level workers of the program). Normally two book-fairies together conduct a reading class session of 90-minute duration. Each class and hence every student gets receives 90 minutes of supervised reading and related activities every week. The book fairies are specially trained for conducting these activities. The 90 minutes are utilized in a planned manner as shown below.
Table No. 9: 90-Minutes Plan Of The Reading Class Time in Type of Activity minutes Distribution and collection of Books 15 Reading Aloud practice for all children, (average time per child is 30 one and a half to two minutes for 40 children with two book-fairies) Word games (These are participatory. Children suggest the words of a theme or a letter selected for that day and all the words 15 suggested by children are written on the black board either by a Book fairy or by children themselves) Singing songs & Reciting Poems 5 Story telling (by book fairy) 8 Story telling by children ( 2-4 children are supposed to tell what 10 they read from the book they have taken in class/ home) Giving books to take home 7 Total 90
The Book Fairy usually carries a set of books with her for a Reading Class. The number of books depends on the class strength (it is at least 1 ½ times the class strength). The books are selected according to the reading levels of children in that class.
Coverage
Table No. 10: Distribution Of Students Standard Wise Standard I* II III IV Total
Number of classes 122 121 122 119 484
Number of students 5919 5499 5426 4912 21756
* The numbers in this table include classes in the Urdu medium schools, but classes of Std. III are reflected in the Std. I column, as that is the level of the children as far as Marathi is concerned. In Urdu medium schools, Marathi is introduced in Std. III as a second language.
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Children Who Are Good At Reading Help Others To Read Books
As each class seems to have had 20-23 Reading Sessions, most of the children have at least handled 21 or more books each. We say ‘handled’ because how many of these books they ‘read’ really depends on their ability. In every session, the actual reading time is about 30 to 35 minutes. Not many children can finish a book during that time. Hence we allow them to take the books home if they want to do so. And as we see from the figures of lending library membership, we realize that many children do want to take books home.
However, there is a paucity of graded reading material in Marathi. A number of books for children who can read well are available in the market. But there are hardly any books for a beginner. We can say this with confidence because over a period of time we have collected almost all the books published for children in Marathi language. When we started working 8 years ago, there were a few titles of this category. Currently some of those books are ‘out of print’ and publishers are not keen on printing those books again. We have been trying to bring these lacunae to the notice of writers of children’s literature. We are happy to note here that our efforts bore fruit for the first time during this year.
A highly mentionable event is the visit of Dr. Mrs. Vijaya Wad, Chairman of Maharashtra Shasan Marathi Vishwakosh Mandal. She visited Jaibhavani School and observed the Reading Class for an hour or so with great interest. She noted down her impressions in the following words. “It was very satisfying to see children so happy. I liked the teachers and the Book Fairies. My blessings and love to this program.” Dr. (Mrs.) Wad made a call to writers to write stories without composite letter words. She took an initiative for this and got some writers together to write and has promised to bring out at least 6 new titles by the next academic year.
Table No.11: Children’s Level Of Reading Ability And Availability Of Level- Appropriate Books
Level of reading and book *No. Of Readers No. Of No. Of Books No. Of type required in percentage Titles per Child books Learning alphabets 14 17 - 965 Elementary (books with 36 4 13721 alphabets and Matras) 21 Books without Composite 26 22 1 6021 letter Words Books with Composite Letters 39 1888 4 28126 Total 21756 1963 48833 * We have worked out these percentages on the basis of Reading Ability tests that we give administer twice every year.
The table clearly brings out the point of paucity of graded reading material that we talked about in the earlier paragraph. The ratio of books per child for books without composite letters is the least in the above table because very few such books are available in market. Out of the 22 titles of story books without composite letter words, 15 are written and published by us.
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Reading Ability Test
We conduct two reading ability tests in an academic year so as to assess the level of reading abilities of the students. One test is conducted at the beginning of the academic year i.e. in July whereas the other is conducted at the end of the year in the month of March. The test is designed to evaluate the children on for their reading ability. As mentioned earlier there are four categories or levels. Children who can read: The whole alphabet. A paragraph, which comprises of all the barakhadi matra’s. All the composite letters appearing in prescribed text books for each class. A paragraph, comprising of all types of composite letters.
Table No. 12: Reading Ability Test At The End Of The Academic Year
Standard I II III IV Total Level of Reading 2479 Incomplete Alphabet 1678 603 155 43 (14%) 3842 Alphabet complete 1677 1266 610 289 (21%) 4585 Matras complete 725 1271 1403 1186 (26%)
All types of Composite letters & 6898 356 1397 2425 2720 words (39%)
17804 Total 4436 4537 4593 4238 (100%) Absent for the test 1483 962 833 674 3952
Total 5919 5499 5426 4912 21756
We can see that even at the end of the year 14% of the total students are still struggling with alphabets only. And although more than 67 percent of these students are from Std. I, 25, 25% of them are from Std. II, there are some (8%) students even from Std. II & IV who do not know alphabets. If we go by the prescribed text books the children are expected to learn all alphabets and Matras and a few composite letter words by the end of the 1st year of schooling. The Stds. II & III, are expected to develop comprehension, vocabulary, and power of expression while honing the reading skills. The extent to which we are lacking in achieving the expected goals is clear from the figures we see in Table 12.
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Home Lending Program
Home lending in primary school started in 1999 as a part of Reading Class activity itself. However, on the basis of our experience, we changed our policy of starting Reading Classes and Lending library at same the time. Now, we start the Lending library after the completion of one year of Reading classes in that school. This year we conducted this program in 47 schools, (27 of PMC and 20 of PCMC.)
Table No. 13: Home Lending Record From 1999-2008 For Std. II - IV Year 1999- 2000- 2001- 2002- 2003- 2004- 2005- 2006- 2007- 2000 2001** 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 Std *
II 119 352 445 729 768 841 796
III 243 504 651 1055 1046 1138 2350
IV 163 522 713 913 1032 1090 2447
Total 169 Na 525 1378 1849 2697 2846 3069 5623
51% 66% 81% 82% 73% *Standard wise record is unavailable. **The program was discontinued due to staff problem. The percentage of readers this year has reduced because we faced certain technical difficulties, which have affected the books given home.
Table No. 14: Circulation of Books in Home lending program
No. Of Books No. Of Issued 11 to No. Of 1 to 5 6 to10 16 to20 Eligible 15 Readers Readers Standard
II 164 234 256 142 796 986
III 1171 683 388 108 2350 3196
IV 1211 764 374 128 2477 3188
Total 2546 1681 1018 378 5623 7370 This year the children have read 8 books on average.
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Home Lending for Stds. V to VII.
This library for the high school children was started entirely due to the demand of the children and the willingness of the school officials. The program was started in 2002 in a school solely on trial basis. A fee of Rs.5 was charged, but due to certain problems encountered, the program was discontinued in the year 2003. It was re-started in 2004, but as a free library. Initially it was started in 4 schools, since then the response has been so overwhelming that it has steadily increased.
Table No. 15: Increase In Number Of Readers Annually
Year & No. 2002- 2003- 2004- 2005- 2006- 2007- Of schools 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 covered (1) (Nil) (4) (6) (15) (19) Standard
V 318 432 1197 1081
VI 333 391 995 1087
VII 296 378 817 947
1201 3009 3115 Total Readers 89 947 (99%) (97%) (83%)
Not Total Students 1218 3109 3734 Available
Table No. 16: No. Of Readers In The Secondary Section (Stds. V to VII) No. Of 11 16 21 No. Of 1 to 6 to 26 to books to to to Total eligible 5 10 30+ issued 15 20 25 readers
1081 V 239 281 322 135 35 69 1360 (79%)
1087 VI 194 303 318 181 57 34 1259 (86%)
947 VII 179 310 312 106 11 29 1115 (85%)
3115 Total 612 894 952 422 103 70 3734 (83%) Maximum numbers of children have read 11-15 books.
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Experiences While Conducting Reading Classes
Exposing children to a variety of books not only generates their interest in reading but also increases their reading ability. The supervised reading taken by our book fairies also helps the kids to get bolder. They are also encouraged to participate in various competitions like story telling, reading conducted by us. The winners are also given prizes. Common experience while running the library is loosing or damaging books, but we found that the percentage of lost and damaged books is 4-5%.
Impact of Reading Classes
It is difficult to quantify the impact of reading classes without comparing the children with and without Reading Class exposure, an exercise we have undertaken once in 2004-05, but is not always possible to. There we found that the reading classes make noticeable difference in Reading Ability of children of Stds. III and IV. The difference in Stds. I and II is almost negligible, though. This means that the change process takes a long time to show noticeable impact. It is not immediate or instant. There are other indicators of change though. Each Reading Class is the direct interaction of the book fairy and the children for 90 minutes for nearly 25 times a year and taking into consideration school vacations and holidays it is at least thrice a month during school year. The children along with reading are also subjected to various other activities like songs, games, stories etc. These sessions are bound to have some affect on the children.
Here are a few such observations Change as observed by the teachers: Attention span of children has increased and kids they have started reading for a longer period of time. Children are not as listless as they used to be before they were introduced to Reading Classes. Their reading speed has improved. Children often have a habit of reading a letter and then the matra alongside it for e.g. K+A ki matra = KA, but now due to the reading practice that the children get, they read KA at a time. This also helps to increase their reading speed.
Removed photograph
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Improvement in Reading Ability (seen from earlier reports)
As we have mentioned earlier we give reading ability test to all children at the beginning and at the end of academic year. Following is the compilation of the previous four-year Reading Ability Test results as seen at the end of the academic year. We have compared the data by taking children with no RC experience, with 1-year exposure, and with 2 and 3, years of the RC exposure. The results show the following-
Table No. 17: Percentage Of Children Who Are Able To Read Any Written Matter Without Difficulty No. Of Years Of Std. IV Std.III Std.II No. Of Reading Classes Schools Exposure % % % 3 yrs (2002-05) 21 85 72 49 2 yrs (2003-05) 18 83 66 44 1 yr (2004-05) 14 73 61 33 No. of RCs 10 50 47 31
The table clearly shows, that the percentage of the children who can read well, improves considerably with the increasing number of years of exposure to the Reading Classes and lending library.
OTHER ACTIVITIES
Study Centers
We have two study centers. In 2002, we started the Dada Paranjpe Abhyasika supported by Gadgil Family, in Dattawadi. Then in August 2003, with Mrs. Malati Kelkar’s support, we started the Bapusaheb Chowgule Center in the Shivaji Housing Society near Senapati Bapat Road . Since 2005, this centre is supported by Ernst and Young. Mrs. Malti Kelkar supports non formal education classes instead.
Table No. 18: Activities at the two Study Centers Activity No. of locations No. of Children from Reference Libraries 438 19 Computer Classes 153 17 Study Classes 199 15 Children’s (story books) library 237 22 NFE 27 2 Balwadi 39 3 Volunteers/ volunteer groups 80+ 4
As we see from the table 18, study centers provide direct education services such as Balwadis, study classes etc. along with an full entirely new set of services such as community and reference library facilities and computer classes etc. Unlike the direct
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education programs, community library, reference library and computer classes mainly target children from middle and secondary schools. We have recently started a facility to conduct simple experiments to learn the basics of science learnt in schools. This facility is available only in Dattawadi Center.
The response of children is good and a teacher from a nearby primary school has requested us to take their students and allow them to conduct experiments there on a regular basis.
We plan to start similar facility in our other center as well. Let us now see what each of this program entails
Community Libraries
Community library is one of the four programs that we started our work with (Balwadi, Study Class and NFE class are the other three). However, this particular program has not expanded as the other 3 did. Instead we initiated ‘Project Grow with books’ under which we run Reading Classes for 1st to 4th std. children of Corporation Schools. We also run leading Libraries for the children up to Std. VII. Both these activities are school based and one relatively easy and cost effective to operate and more importantly, ‘Reading Classes’ are more appropriate to the objective we aim to achieve. The main objective in starting Community Libraries as one of the major programs was to improve the reading skills of children by providing easy access to a variety of reading material. In community Library program this objective is not really fulfilled as the membership is optional and only those who already know how to read well become members. There is nothing wrong in that but it does not serve the purpose we have in mind. Hence we started the ‘Reading Classes’, where is the group is captive and all get the supervised reading practice along with the easy access to books through lending Libraries. We have already talked about the benefits of Reading Classes in the concerned section. The community Libraries continued to be one of our services although they have undergone periodic changes and ups and down. The status of community Library Program in the year 2007-08 is as shown in Table No. 19
Table No. 19: Books Read by the Children in Community Libraries No. of books Boys Girls Total
1 to 5 27 37 64
6 to 10 18 25 43
11 to 15 21 14 35
16 to 20 7 9 16
20+ 55 39 94
Total 128 124 252
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In community libraries, children come from different places, which are often two to four kilometers away from our centers. It is not possible for these children to come to exchange the books everyday. In response to this we started a few small ‘branches’ of our libraries in the communities near Dattawadi and the Shivaji Housing Society in January 2008. A student who has benefited from our study center is appointed to look after the community library. He carries a bag of 50 books to his house and exchanges them every month. As another new development, we have started community libraries on construction sites, i.e. Mont Vert and DRDO. This has been a success and in future we plan to expand this initiative if there is a demand from the children.
Reference Library
Our reference libraries (Sandarbh Vachnalaya) are for children from Stds. I through X who need a place where they can sit undisturbed and focus on their studies. Atlases, dictionaries and other useful material, not found in most of the children’s homes, are available at the centers; as is the required space and quietness. No regular teaching takes place here, but a teacher is always available to help the students.
Apart from this, the reference library has become the a platform for a variety of additional educational activities for the children. Most volunteers, who come to teach, do so at with the reference library children, holding sessions in typically in English or sciences on a daily or weekly basis. Furthermore, trips and picnics are arranged to parks, cultural heritage sites and other places of interest around the city. These have included regular visits to Quest, a science laboratory for school children, as well as to Peshwe Park, a park that exhibits technological instruments and methods for obtaining sustainable energy.
We are currently running five reference libraries in Pune. Last year we started a reference library in a construction labour camp, DRDO, due to the demand of the children who had grown too old for our study classes. This has been a success and is still running. So when the children on the Mont Vert construction site asked for a reference library this year we were ready to fulfill their requirements.
Table No. 20: Beneficiaries of The Reference Library Facilities
Center Name I- IV V VI VII VIII IX X Other Total
Dattawadi 68 28 40 40 28 17 31 19 271
Shivaji Hsg. 68 28 40 40 28 17 31 - 252
D.R.D.O. 14 ------14
Lara 14 3 4 2 2 - - - 25
Mount Vert 19 5 6 2 - - - - 32
Total 183 64 90 84 58 34 62 19 594
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Computer Classes
A total of 153 children attended our computer classes in Pune this year. The classes are run conducted in Dattawadi and the Shivaji Housing Society where we have a total of 12 computers. The program, which is supported by Ernst and Young Foundation and Asha Star, focuses on individual computer usage in the basic Office programs. Access is also provided to young adults for office training. Sana Shaikh who completed the DSS computer course in 2007, is now working as a data entry operator in OM Capitals at the scale of Rs. 5000/- per month.
Ganesh Shinde is a crippled physically disabled person from Shiroli (Chakan), who comes daily for computer class. He is approximately 20 years old but left school after Std. VII. Now, he is excellent in Marathi documents. In the future he wants to become a computer operator. Hence, we are concentrating on his typing and formatting skills. Quest
Quest is a science and math activity center for children founded by Mrs. Malati Kelkar. In 2007-2008, approximately 113 children from eight different locations enjoyed attending Quest once a week. On February 24, World Science Day, these children took part in a science exhibition at Quest. Here, they demonstrated and explained the practical experiments scientifically to groups of visitors.
It was not always possible for our children at Dattawadi to attend Quest regularly as it was 12 to 13 Km away. They visited Quest just once in the first week of February. Fortunately, due to private donations and a volunteer who is willing to come once a week we were able to start an alternative science practicals program in August 2007. This continues and each Friday around 20 students attend. They were invited to participate in the science exhibition at Quest at just 15 days notice but put up and excellent show.
We are proud to say that Mrs. Malati Kelkar even wrote a special letter after the science exhibition and informed us about the excellent progress of the children. She was impressed by their active participationa and enthusiasm, and by their good discipline, high confidence level, and attitudinal change. The children performed 44 experiments at Quest. Fortunately, children from all Reference libraries, Non Formal Educational Classes, Study Classes in the vicinity could attend the exhibition.
……and the children grew potatoes!
At Quest, sessions children were taught to separate dry and wet garbage and were also shown how to use the wet garbage to make compost manure and to grow vegetables, etc. Children from one of the locations, Orange County, actually tried to do it in a small corner outside their classroom. They all collected wet garbage from home and put it in the corner to decay and turn into manure. They sowed some potatoes in it and patiently waited for the potatoes to grow. When the potato leaves dried up in spite of daily watering they pulled out the plant. And to their big surprise there were 9 potatoes! Needless to say that children were very happy and proud of their achievement. They organized a party, cooked the potatoes and had the meal of their life!
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TRAINING CENTER ‘PARIVARTAN’
The Parivartan Training center was initiated in October 2007. Training has always been an important part of our work. Since our needs are unique in certain ways, we have put in special efforts to develop the training content, method along with a kit of teaching aids suitable to our needs.
However, conducting regular training programs both for fresher and for the staff already working in the field was not always possible. Every year we used to conduct training for the teachers at the end of both the academic terms. But the time we allocated for training was not really sufficient. With the pressure of expansion, often the training that took place was on the job. So the need and the readiness to start training center was already there. This year by starting a separate training center we have gone a step further.
The goal is to train 100 fresh recruits for the job of teachers for Non-formal Education centers. In addition, training for supervisors, coordinators and teachers who are already with us will be also be given training which could be a refresher or the first-time training depending on the need and availability of time.
New teachers’ training is a 7-week-long course of which first 3 weeks are for class– room training and the following 3 weeks are for field training and last week is for feedback and recapitulating sessions.
We have just finished the first six months of the training center in which 4 trainings of variable durations are conducted. First two trainings were for our own staff. And from the third training onwards we have started the trainings of new recruits. So far we have trained 39 from our own staff and 48 from the new recruits. Looking at the figures of new recruits, we seem to be falling too short of our target of 100 teachers this year. Some teething trouble problems consumed some of our time in the first year of functioning. We are now ready to take on the challenge and we are confident we will meet the target.
PUBLICATIONS
When we started Door Step School, we had no idea that we will ever publish books. But we did it! We did it first in 2002 with a set of 8 books for the beginners. The paucity of books in Marathi for graded learning and the books which have big bold type, lot of reading material, easy every day use language and reasonable price are rather scarce. When we started the Reading Classes under ‘Project Grow with Books’ in 1999, we started buying books in large quantities. We also gained first hand knowledge of the needs of children based on their reading abilities and the difficulty in getting the right type of books. This led us to publish books ourselves. We have since published more than 30 different books: story-books and the books for learning to read.
Please refer to the list of publications in the appendix No. 1.
“Thank you so much for sending the whole set of children's books published by the 'Door Step School'. These are amazing. I especially liked your alphabet series, very imaginative; with these books teaching Marathi will be so much more easy and enjoyable. I will certainly pass on these books to the teachers and show these to my friends who are interested in teaching Marathi to their grandchildren or to their sons or daughters in laws.” Asha Pawagi, President, Nachiket Bal Wachanalay
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ROLE OF VOLUNTEERS
For many years, now, the organization has gained from the help of volunteers. A new trend of more locals coming on a regular basis has emerged, whereas in earlier times saw we had a larger proportion of foreigners. It is also uplifting and heartening to see a greater sense of commitment, as earlier we had many experiences of people who came only a few times but did not continue. Some of our local volunteers have now worked with us for two years. The volunteers come with expertise in various fields. Normally, volunteers work in our study centers, tutoring the children in their schoolwork and sometimes teaching art and craft. Some work with the administration in the office, while others help with painting and other major maintenance projects in our centers. While the major programs run independently from volunteers contributions, those who join us for shorter or longer periods of time do indeed bring positive inputs into our organization, either as a helping hand for our regular staff or in their direct interaction with the children.
As we say that our book fairies are the building blocks of our program, the volunteers are the supporting beams of it. The main aim of our organization has always been for the betterment of our children. The volunteers recharge our belief in this by extending their support in any way that they can, and not expecting any monetary remuneration for it.
A library management system was developed for this program by some volunteers. Mr. Saumyak Sen, Mr. Somnath Ghosh played a pivotal role in it. They were introduced to this organization by Mr. Ranjit Gadgil. They spent their valuable time to personally meet the concerned people, so as to get an idea about the reading classes. They had few meetings with the officials, concerned staff and discussed points like: What was expected from the software? Who will use it? How can it be made user friendly and so on.
They developed a software which helps us in managing our data efficiently. Mr.Saumyak Sen, Mr.Somnath Ghosh and Mr. Abhijeet Jagtap were also involved in teaching some staff basic computer skills, English and also certain packages like MS word, Excel etc. to some of the staff members.
FUTURE PLANS
Expansion plan of Non Formal Education classes: We are currently working on 68 locations. This year we touched 77 locations. In the coming year, we plan to cover approximately 200 locations. We were planning to cover the area from Katraj to Wakad. There are approximately 500 locations in this area but it is not possible for us to cover all of them within one year as it requires a much more extensively developed infrastructure in our organization which it will still take some more time to acquire. It is necessary for us to increase our speed as within two years, many sites in this area will be closed and we will lose these children. So speed is very essential. Our reading classes are to be started in 52 new schools in both PMC and PCMC.
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Appendix 1: List of Publications
Sr.No. Year Name of the book Category
1 Nov 2002 mauLaxaro 1-8 Baaga Barakhadi gaaoYTI [kDcyaa March itakDcyaa 2 set of mixed stories 2003 gamataIjamataIcyaa Baaga 10 story without composite 3 Feb 2005 ASaI JaalaI paLapaL letters
]Mca ]Mca AaNaKaIna story without composite 4 Feb 2005 ]Mca letters
sasaaobaa inaGaalao story without composite 5 Feb 2005 Gar saaoDayalaa letters
AajaI-Aajaaobaa AaiNa story without composite 6 Feb 2005 saarsa paxaI letters
story without composite 7 Feb 2005 jaadUcaI ikTlaI letters
maulaaMnaI laavalaI story without composite 8 Feb 2005 JaaDo letters
story without composite 9 maurlaI maurlaIvaalaa letters
story without composite 10 ekda kaya Jaalao letters
[laUipalaUcaI jamaaDI storywithout composite 11 jammata letters
mauMgaIraNaI far story without composite 12 Feb 2005 SahaNaI letters majaodar kqaa(jaadu{ story without composite 13 2008 jaMgala) letters majaodar kqaa(eoka story without composite 14 2008 khaNaI naagaobaacaI letters va KaulaBar duQaacaI) Sept kaoDyaacaI paustako 15 Puzzles 2003 Baaga 1 va 2 16 May 2005 jaaoDaxar (56 paanaI) Composite letters
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EXECUTIVE BODY MEMBERS
Details of board members
Name Sex Position On Occupation/Designation Meetings The Board Attended Rajani Paranjpe F President Social Worker Ex-Lecturer Of 2/3 College Of Social Work Nirmala Niketan Bina Sheth Lashkari F Secretary Professional Social Worker 3/3 (MSW) Nitin Dadia M Treasurer Businessman 2/3 Neela Dabir F Member Reader In Tata Institute Of 3/3 Social Sciences Arnavaz Kharas F Member Professional Social Worker 3/3 (MSW) Farida Lambey F Member Vice Principal - College Of 0/3 Social Work Nirmala Niketan Bina Joshi F Member PG In Development Planning 0/3 And M.Phil In Education (Interdisciplinary) , Both From Poona University
Total cost of international travel by all staff during the year
No. Name /Designation Destination and Gross expenses Sponsored purpose yes/no
No cost of international travel involved.
ACCOUNTABILITY AND TRANSPARENCY
Distribution of Staff according to salary Staff details as on (as on 30 th June 2008) (as on 30 th June 2008) Salary plus benefits Male Female Total Gender Male Female Total paid to staff <2000 0 149 149 Paid full time 22 336 358 >2000 – 3500 3 173 176 Paid part time 0 46 46 >3500 – 5000 7 26 33 Volunteers* >5000-7500 10 16 26 >7500 – 10000 2 9 11 >10000 0 9 9 Total 22 382 404 Total 22 382 404
List of Volunteers in Many Thanks to…
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MANY THANKS TO ……….
Our Major Project Partners…………
Ammada Trust Anna Orring (Individual donor of CSI) Anuja Khemka - Safar Trust Asha For Education - Seattle Asha For Education - Atlanta Asha For Education – NY/JC Asha Star Bombay Community Public Trust Carnegie Social Initiative Charities Aid Foundation (CAF) Children’s Hope India, Inc Concern India Foundation Cummins Diesel India Foundation Educate The Children Ernst & Young Pvt. Ltd. Forbes Marshall Pvt. Ltd. HDFC Bank Hong Kong & Shanghai Banking Corp. Ltd HSBC Asset Management (India) Pvt. Ltd. ICICI Securities And Finance Company Limited ( I-Sec) K.C. Mahindra Education Trust – Nanhi Kali Kakade Construction Les Amis De Soeur Emmanuelle (Asmae) Mahatama Phule Shikshan Hami Yojana Ministry Of Human Resource Development (Govt of India I & E Project) Mr. Baman Mehta Mr. Rahul Shah Mr. Ranjit Gadgil & Family Mrs. Malati Kelkar & Family Ms. Shobha Shah Mr. & Mrs. Christopher Meredith And An Anonymous Asha Supporter. NVIDIA Plan International –India Chapter Rabo India Finance Pvt. Ltd. Reach India Sadguru Kamubaba Foundation Spirax Marshall Pvt. Ltd. Springer Science + Business Media Deutschland GmbH Surajben Maganlal Shah Trust Symantec Tech Mahindra The Global Fund For Children UBS Securities India Pvt. Ltd. UPS Foundation Inc Veritas Software India Pvt. Ltd VIBHA Wipro
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Our Other Supporters and Well Wishers ………… Mr. Achutha Shethigar… Mr. Ajit Kamble… Mr.Anand Krishnamurthy… Mr.Anil Rane… Master Arman Jain… Ms. Bharati Dalal… Mr.Brijesh S.Modi… Ms. Charu Gupta… Mr. Devendra Varma -Godrej & Boyce Mfg Co. Ltd... Dr. D Prashant Nair… Ms. Dyaneshwari Joglekar… Ms. Ellie Wisre… …. G.R.Mansukhani… Ms. Holly Mackay… Ms. Mala Gandhi… Ms. Manisha Bhise… Mr. Michael R. Miele Ianne … H. Esbenshade… Mr. Mohan Hirdwani-Hirdwani Trust… Ms. Monaz Zainabadi… Mrs. Malpani … Ms. Nina Quadros- Mahindra Powerol Business … Mr. Prashant Shah -Rabo India… Ms. Priya Nandani- HSBC… Mr. Rajeev Dube – Mahindra & Mahindra... Ms. Ritu Nanda… Mr. S M Shetty… Ms. Shilpaben Tanna… Ms. Shirin Sakhidas… Mr. Shrikant Bhide… Ms. Sujata Gosalia,.. Ms. Supriya Joshi And Team… Mr. Suresh Deora… Mr. Yogendra Maheshwari… Ms Jyoti Shah… Mr. Mukul Kasiliwal… Ms. Thritee… Ms. Gungun Thanvi… Ms. Kainaz Motiwalla … A.H.Wadia Trust… Azim Premji Foundation… Bandra East Community Centre… Cathedral and John Cannon School … Dasra… Entremonde Polyciaters Ltd … Give India… Keyur Agency… Maitri Groups … Volunteer Youth Project… Childline India Foundation… Adept Construction... Aditya Shagun Developers... Alanknanda Construction... Atharva Housing... Belvalkar Housing Scheme... Bhakti Sudha Bajani Mandal... Camellia Associates... Chirag Developers... Deccan Furnishers… Five Vision Developers... Gajraj Construction... HDFC Bank Ltd… Home Developers... Insia Supera Featherd Pipe Foundation... Invental Construction... Jagruti Team - Infosys... Joglekar Kulvrutant Samitee... Mahatma Phule... N.J. Devani Builders Pvt. Ltd. ... Nandan builders... New Front Developers... NVIDIA Graphics... Padmavati Associates... Pawar & Patkar Construction... Pentagaon Ventures... Persistent System... Rachana Associates... Rotary Club... Satsang Mandal... Sevadam Trust... Shama Enterprises... Shobha Developers... Shreyas Developers... Shri Sai Builders... Snehavardhini Satsang Mahila Mandal... Softbridge Solutions Pvt. Ltd... Mrs. Kusumavati Thakar Foundation... Sparsh-A Healing touch... Surana Mutha Developers...Swadhar I.D.W.C,Pune... The Promoters & builders... Universal Construction Machinery & Equ.... User IN Design... Vyas Realties Pvt. Ltd.… Ziggurat … Mr. Manu Agarwal ... Ms. Aitken Pamela ... Ms. Akshara ... Mr. Kishor Arora... Ms. Morog & Avrit ... Ms. Meera Baelhwar... Ms. Anagha Bapat... Ms Suman Bapat ... Ms Jane Bell ... Mr. Belwalkar ... Mr. & Ms. Bhaduri ... Ms. Budhisagar ... Mr. A.P. Chaphalkar ... Padmakar Chaphekar & Family... Ms. Prabhatai Chaphekar and family... Ms. Chaya S. Chaudhary ... Ms. Sulabha Chhatre ... Dr. Arjun Chikhale ... Ms. Asha Chordia ... Ms. Tanuja Chandawar... Ms. Lalima Choudhary... Mr. Bapusaheb. Suhas Chougule... Ms. Leela Chowgule... Ms. Manjiri Datey... Mr. Sudhir Deshpande... Ms. Deuskar... Ms. Kiran Dongare... Ms. Mary Dsouza... Ms. Emily Heathfield... Ms. T. Entni ... Ms. Hema Gadgil... Mr. Ashish Gawade...Ms. Gehani. ... Dr. A. V. Godewar... Ms. Swati Gokhale... Dr. Vilas Gundecha... Ms. Theresa Hally May... Ms. Meena Harisinghani ... Ms. Vijaya Hole... Ms. Jackson Helan ...Jacquet Margaret Williams… Ms. Nanda Jadhav... Ms. Pratibha Jadhav ... Mr. Suresh Joglekar... Ms. Shamala Joshi... Mr. Sunil Ramesh Kamat... Mr. Ajit Kamble... Ms. Seemantinee Kanade... Mr. Jaikishan Karva... Ms. Rajashree Karwa….. Ms. Malati Kelkar... Mr. Rajeev Dattatray Khare ...Mr. Narayan Das Khatri... Ms. Aarati Kirloskar... Dr. (Ms.) D.H. Kishanchandani... Mr. Shamkant Kotkar... Ms. Kulkarni ...Ms. Usha Kulkarni... Ms. Vrinda Kulkarni... Ms. Lata Prakash... Mr. Praveen Kumar Lodhe... Ms. Sampada Lohagoukar... Mr. Vijay Mahajani... Mr. Sahebrao Malale... Ms. Mohini Mehendale... Ms. Moore Patricia...Ms. Usha Nair... Ms. Mandakini Najikkar... Ms. K. Nakagawa... Ms. Hema Narayanan... Mr. Pramod Navalkar... Dr. Arun Nigvekar... Mr. Nilesh Naik... Mr. T. Oishi ... Mr. Nitin Paranjape ... Ms. Sharmila Paranjape... Ms. Madhuri Paranjpe... Ms. Rajani Paranjpe... Ms. Sindhutai Paranjpe ... Ms. Anagha Pathak ... Mr. J.K. Patil... Ms. Patwardhan... Mr. Sujit Patwardhan... Mr. Prataprao Pawar ... Mr. Saurabh Pawar ... Mr. N. V. Prashant... Mr. Premnath... Mr. Manohar Rakshe... Mr. K. Y. Ranade ... Ms. R.M. Ranade ... Ms. Sunita Ranade... Mr. Ramesh Saligame ... Ms. Sivani Sengupta ... Mr. Imran Shaikh... Ms. Shashi Sharma....Mr. Shinbo... Ms. D. Shrida... Ms.Tiwari... Ms. Minnie Vaid ... Ms. Sunita Vidhate ... Ms. Nancy Rogers Zegarra...
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Visitors …….
Mr. Champak Chatterji – Education Secretary, MHRD , Government of India, Mr. Narendra Kawde, IAS , State Project Director MPSP, Mrs. Mrunalini Naik- Programme coordinator, MPSP… Mr. Ajit Bhand - Asha Dallas And The Asha Calendar Team … Ms. Anuja Khemka – Safar Trust… Ms. Arundhati Gupta-Global Fund For Children… Ms. Asha Sitaram … B K Jhawar… Mr. Barend Van Herpe… Mr. Bharat Bhargava – Vodafone Essar Limited… Mr. Bikrum Sen – DHFL… Mr. Caleb Shreve- Hewlett Foundation … Mr. David Boyd- Thomas – UBS AG… Ms. Deepali – ANT Reporter… Ms. Erika Ohlund–Carnegie Social Initiative … Glenn M. Creamer - Providence Equity USA… Ms. Kamal Damania-Times Foundation… Mr. Kaushik Parasnis… Yukio Tomioka- Member, The House Of Councilors, Japan, Kazoo Hirotomo- Member, The House Of Councilors, Japan… Midori Ishii-Member, The House Of Councilors, Japan… Mr. Khali–WWE Wrestler… Mr. David Kowitz-Global Fund For Children… Ms. Agnes Golfier & Christiline - ASMAE… Ms. Namrita Jhangiani–Egon Zehnder International… Ms. Padmaja Nair… Ms. Pamela Mehta… Ms. Pauline… Ms. Pooja Bhalla – Charities Aid Foundation… Rev. David Haslam-Chair Trustee Of Dalit Solidarity Network In UK… Mr. Sandeep Baid– DSP Merrill Lynch Capital Ltd… Mr. Sourav Banerjee– USAID… Mr. Subhash Gala – Infoto … Dr. Suneeta Kulkarni- BCPT Evaluator… Ms. Vikram Sen – HDD… Mr. Vikrant Bhargava… Mr. Vishal Tulsyan- Motilal Oswal Venture Capital Advisors Pvt Ltd … Ms. Lalvani – Inner Wheel Club… British High Commission …. BODH’s volunteers … Chandraramji School’s volunteers … CNBC reporter team … Red Dust Team… Arpan … Muskaan
Volunteers ….,.
Mr. Andrew Sesuraj. M – ASMAE … Baroda Shakti … Coast 2Coast - C Poh & Team - Singapore Interns … E & Y Volunteers… Ms. Hemal Shringla … Students of ITM Business School, Navi Mumbai.… Mrs. Meera Dixit … Ms. Lavita Nathani – Nahi Kali …Student of Ruia College … Ms. Tasneem Arsiwala … UPS Volunteers… Cummins Volunteers Group …D. Y. Patil Medical college… Ernst and Young Volunteers… Wipro English class … Mr. Arun Kumar… Dr. Vaijanthi Athavale Apte …Ms. Nishigandha Bhat …Loesvanden Broke ..… Mr. Abhishek Chauchan... Ms. Nupur Dhakephalkar …Katy Eagle … Mr. G. Shreenath…Mr. Johan Gade …Ms. Hema Gadgil …Ms. Hema Gehani ….. Ms. Swati Gokhale … Wibke Greeven … Dr. Vilas Gundecha … Ms. Revati Hardikar …. Ms. Jayashree Jogleker … Mr. Satish Jogleker …Ms. Smita Joshi … Hemant Khalane & Group….. Mr. Arvind Kher … Dr. Sangeeta Kohali... Mr. Ameet Laad … Judith Lasure ….Ms. Avanti Lavate … Sir. Prabha Pitre … Prem Ved Aasha & Group… Mr. Ramesh Raman …Morisafi Safi … Ms. Sangeeta Shaligram …Mr. Shivkumar… Mr. Gurmeet Singh … Mr. Somnath & Group… Mr. Shrikanth Sridharan … Toyaama.… Ms. Archana Vayvharker (Pune)… Vinaki and Viklas Tomaya…
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THE SOCIETY FOR THE DOOR STEP SCHOOL, BOMBAY
BALANCESHEET AS AT 31st MARCH 200 8
FUNDS & LIABILITIES Rs. Rs.
Trusts funds or Corpus:- Balance as per last Balance Sheet 15,31,213.00 Adjustment during the year (give details) Received during the year … … … 2,45,704.00 17,76,917.00
Other Earmarked Funds :- (Created under the provisions of the trust deed or scheme or out of the Income) … … … Depreciation Fund … … … NIL Sinking Fund … … … 1,00,000.00 Reserve Fund … … … 20,00,000.00 Any Other Fund (School on Wheel Bus Fund) … … … 8,82,615.00 29,82,615.00
Loans (Secured or Unsecured):- From Trustees … … … 5,673.75 From Others … … … NIL 5,673.75
Liabilities For Expenses … … … NIL For Advances … … … 78,08,103.90 For Rent and Other Deposits … … … NIL For Sundry Credit Balance … … … 23,29,494.85 4,66,185.33 1,06,03,784.08
Income and Expenditure Account :- Balance as per last Balance Sheet … … … 33,95,916.79 Less : Appropriation, if any … … … NIL 33,95,916.79
Add: Surplus … … … 25,77,392.39
Less: Deficit … … … 59,73,309.18
Total Rs…….. 2,13,42,299.01
As per our report of even date
Dated at . 7.11.08, Mumbai Chartered Accountants Auditors Manit J Shroff Chartered Accountants 10, 2 nd Bhatwadi, Girgaum, Mumbai 400 004
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THE SOCIETY FOR THE DOOR STEP SCHOOL, BOMBAY
BALANCESHEET AS AT 31st MARCH 200 8
PROPERTY AND ASSESTS Rs. Rs. `
Immovable Properties :- (At Cost) NIL NIL Balance as per last Balance Sheet Additions during the year … … … Less : Sales during the year … … … NIL Depreciation up to date … … …
Investments:- … … … NIL NIL Note: The market value of the above investments … … … is Rs. … … … … … … Furniture & Fixtures :-As per schedule ‘A' … … … 18,15,906.45 Balance as per last Balance Sheet Additions during the Less : Sales during the year … … … Depreciation up to date … … …
Loans (Secured or Unsecured) : Good/doubtful NIL Loans Scholarships … … … NIL Other Loans … … … NIL … … … Advances :- … … … To Trustees NIL To Employees 1,80,459.00 To contractors NIL To Lawyers … … … NIL To Others … … … 14,77,255.33 16,57,714.33
Income Outstanding:- … … NIL Rent … … … NIL Interest NIL Other Income NIL
Cash & Bank Balance – As per schedule ‘B’ 1,78,68,678.23 (a) In Current In Fixed Deposit Account With (b) With the Trustee (c ) With the manager
Income and Expenditure Account : NIL Balance as per Balance Sheet Less: Appropriation, if any
Add: Deficit
Less: Surplus
Total Rs…….. 2,13,42,299.01
Income Outstanding: (if accounts are kept in cash basis Rent The above Balance Sheet to the best of my/our belief contains a true account Interest of the Funds and Liabilities and of the Property and Assets of the trust Other income
TOTAL Rs. Dated at 7.11.08, Mumbai , ______TRUSTEE
Mrs. Rajani Paranjpe Mrs. Bina Sheth Lashkari Mr. Nitin Dadia President Secretary Treasurer
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THE SOCIETY FOR THE DOOR STEP SCHOOL, BOMBAY
INCOME AND EXPENDITURE ACCOUNT FOR THE YEAR ENDING 31st MARCH 200 8
EXPENDITURE Rs. Rs.
To Expenditure in respect of properties Rates, Taxes, Cesses NIL Repairs and maintenance … … … NIL Salaries NIL Insurance NIL Depreciation (by way of provision of adjustment NIL Other Expenses … … NIL
To Establishment Expenses … … … NIL … … … To Remuneration to Trustees … … … NIL
To Remuneration ( in the case of a math ) to the head of the math, NIL including his household expenditure, if any … … … … … … To Legal Expenses- Professional Fees 2,236.00
To Audit Fees … … … 20,678.00 … … … To Contribution and Fees … … … NIL … … …
To Amount written off: (a) Bad Debts … … … NIL (b) Loan Scholarship … … … NIL (c ) Irrecoverable Rents NIL (d ) Other Items … … … NIL NIL … … … To Miscellaneous Expenses NIL
To Depreciation 7,06,244.00
To Amount transferred to Reserve or Specific Funds NIL
To Expenditure on Objects of the Trust (a) Religious NIL (b) Educational 1,72,78,937.60 (c ) Medical Relief NIL (d) Relief of Poverty NIL (e) Other Charitable Objects NIL 1,72,78,937.60
To Surplus carried over to Balance Sheet 25,77,392.39
Total Rs…….. 2,05,85,487.99 As per our report of even dae
Dated at 7.11.2008, Mumbai ______Chartered Accountants Auditors Manit J Shroff Chartered Accountants 10, 2 nd Bhatwadi, Girgaum, Mumbai 400 004
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THE SOCIETY FOR THE DOOR STEP SCHOOL, BOMBAY
INCOME AND EXPENDITURE ACCOUNT FOR THE YEAR ENDING 31st MARCH 2007
INCOME Rs. Rs.
By Rent (accured) NIL (realised … … … By Interest (accured) … … … (realised … … …
On Securities … … … NIL … … … On Loans … … … NIL … … … On Bank Account … … … 2,62,839.68 2,62,839.68
By Dividend NIL … … … … … … By Donations in Cash or Kind 32,71,003.18
By Grants (As per schedule ‘C’) … … … 1,67,93,417.63 … … … By Income from other sources … … … (in details as far as possible) … … … Sponsorship for children contribution 23,250.00 Vocational Training 7,500.00 Other income 2,27,477.50 2,58,227.50
By Transfer from Reserve NIL
By Deficit carried whichever is not applicable' NIL
Total Rs……. . 2,05,85,487.99
Strike off whichever is not applicable
Dated at 7.11.08, Mumbai ______TRUSTEE
Mrs. Rajani Paranjpe Mrs. Bina Sheth Lashkari Mr. Nitin Dadia President Secretary Treasurer
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