RISHI VALLEY RURAL EDUCATION CENTRE (REC) Krishnamurti Foundation, India (KFI) 35AC ANNUAL REPORT 2014 – 2015
Rishi Valley Rural Education Centre’s Outreach Programme
Background: Rishi Valley Rural Education Centre (REC), located in the rural interior of Andhra Pradesh, has been engaged in an integrated outreach programme in the areas of education and community welfare since 1976.
Aims: ➢ To promote quality villagebased education ➢ To train teacher trainers to work in multigrade classrooms ➢ To publish instructional material for village schools ➢ To draw working children into the school system ➢ To create a green space around the school campus for the conservation of Biodiversity in general ➢ To actively involve the community in the daytoday management of the school
Middle School Activities Plantation: The academic year started with planting seeds. Students of class 6 and 7 planted neem and tamarind seeds on the nearby barren hills. Every year the students take part in this activity to keep the valley green. Lemon, pongamia saplings were planted in the campus.
Inspire Science Fair: Students from REC has participated in INSPIRE Science Fair held by the Department of Science and Technology, Government of India. Students displayed various types of compost and organic farming.
Health and Hygiene classes: Dr. Shubha took weekly classes for the middle school students to teach them growth, hygiene, nutrition, yoga, other moral and conduct related topics. Children have greatly benefited learning from these classes.
Environmental workshop: Mr. Suresh Jones, Naturalist and Wildlife Photographer from Madanapalle conducted a workshop at REC on Great backyard bird count day. Students went in groups to count birds in the valley. Later they watched a documentary about various birds and local species. Students learned the names of native birds. Waste management: Waste management project has started in REC campus. Students learned how to segregate the wet and dry waste. They've learned to make organic compost and use it for the plants.
Swatch Bharat @ REC: In December, entire REC team and students on campus actively participated and cleaned up the entire REC grounds. Weed pulling and litter pick up was done. Thorn bushes were cleaned around the campus. It was a fun activity where the big and little worked together.
Art classes: The class 8 students from Rishi Valley school have been interacting with REC middle school students on weekly basis and taught them various arts and crafts. Making friendship bands, working with clay, weaving, mosaic, origami etc,. Both groups had fun working together.
Annual Sports: The annual REC sports meet was organized on 27th and 28th of January, 2015. Around 450 students from 10 Satellite Schools, 200 exstudents and 500 parents and local people attended this sports meet and participated eagerly. Students took part in several track and field events on this 2 day occasion.
Vivekananda drama: A team from Hyderabad has performed the life of Swami Vivekananda drama at REC campus. It was an enriching experience to the students, staff and nearby villagers.
Shadow puppetry training: With the intention of preserving and popularizing the traditional art form of shadow puppetry, the middle school children have been trained to perform shadow/leather puppet shows which are based on the Panchatantra tales.
The entire process of learning shadow puppetry enables the children to develop various skills like singing songs, creating their own puppets for the story, reading and comprehension by practicing dialogues. During puppetry classes children were exposed to role plays and coordination skills working behind the screen. These tours helped the students learn team spirit and life skills.
Students performed in Kothagudem, Ongole, Vijayawada, Tirupati, Horsely hills, Kurabalakota.
If anyone is interested in organizing a puppet show please write to Mr. Anil who is incharge for puppet shows. Email: [email protected]
Satellite Schools' Activities Excursion: In December, class 5 students from all Satellite schools went on excursion to Tirupati. Students visited a zoo park, a regional science centre, a prehistoric park, Iscon Temple and Shilparamam in Tirupati.They also visited Chandragiri Fort.
Metric Mela: Community mathematical fairs, 'Metric Melas', are regularly conducted by the satellite Schools to raise number awareness and to boost mathematical skills in students and rural communities. Satellite schools and REC middle school students’ hosts these events together. Metric System, Weight System, Volume and liquid Measures, buying and selling are few activities displayed at the mela. Students from local schools also participated enthusiastically in these melas. These melas were an event to be remembered for the village and the children. It is also an opportunity for the parents to see their children confidently managing all the activities and their learning.
Cultural exchange program: Rishi Valley class 6 students and Satellite school students spent one day together and interacted with each other by singing folk Songs, english songs, story reading and listening. Later they had lunch at the Satellite school. Together they went on a hike and spent a night in the village. A cultural program was organized in the village at night for the entire group. Overall it was a fun cultural exchange between these two groups.
Cluster sports : August 14th Biannual sports for our Satellite schools were conducted in four venues. All the satellite school children participated.
Mothers Tour: Forty two mothers, 14 teachers and staff members went on an excursion tour to Chennai, Sriperumbudur, Merina Beach, Snake Park, and Ashtalakshmi Temple. Golden temple in Vellore. Mothers also enjoyed watching sunrise at Mahabalipuram. Mothers were quite happy to see various places. This is a one time opportunity for the mothers who wait for this occasion. Village Survey: In the beginning of the academic year, all satellite schools students did a village survey as part of Environmental Science activity. Students collected data about land, water resource, transportation, lively hoods, local festivals, leisure time activities. Type of houses, animals and Professions of the villages.
RIVER Activities
Curriculum development and NCF correlation: The School in a Box content which was developed according to the NCF, 2005 guidelines has been acknowledged as one of the best examples of implementation of Continuous and Comprehensive assessment (mandated by the RTE Act, 2009). RIVER team is currently working to further improve and align it with the prescribed syllabus by the NCERT.
RiVERTIDE: A new project has started this year at RIVER(RiVER – Technology Initiative in Development of Education) is an initiative that takes the MultiGrade MultiLevel approach into the newly emerging classroom environment with its emphasis on e Learning. Systematically arranged pedagogical materials, which are essential aspects of RIVER’s multigrade classroom, are digitized and made available on tablets to teachers and students. Currently we are working on content to be digitized.In future we will test these things in our satellite schools.
RIVERTIDE project was inaugurated by the honorable Union Minister of Civil Aviation Pusapati Ashok Gajapathi Raju.
RiVER & German team activities: Teacher students from Germany visited our schools and learned about MGML methodology. They have also created teaching material in English and Mathematics and tried in our Satellite schools. A learning ladder curriculum for preschools was created by them and tried out in our schools. The team also observed the community school meetings in the villages and interacted with the villagers to understand the parents’ role in our schools. As part of learning the local culture, the team watched village dance and cultural activities. America India Fellowship: RIVER is hosting an American India Foundation Clinton Fellow, Sarah Manchanda She is working on a project to identify students struggling with the current curriculum in mathematics, strengthen supports for struggling learners and train teachers on various strategies to help support all students with varying abilities.
Training Workshops: Throughout the Year RIVER team works on curriculum development, teacher training workshops onsite and offshore workshops to enrich the MGML methodology and bring the quality in primary education in various part of India.
Onsite workshops:
A two day exposure workshop was organized for High school students July from US. Students interacted with our school children and observed the classes. They also learned about folk Puppet Shows.
A team of twenty came from Manthan organization from Delhi and Punjab November for 6 days workshop to learn RIVER MGML pedagogy
Professor Jureg from Switzerland visited RIVER to explore the December opportunity for collaboration between RIVER and the University of Teacher Training in St.Gallen, Switzerland.
A team of twenty came from Uttarakand for 3 days workshop to RIVER February MGML exposure visit.
Professor Ralf and Uli, a team of teacher students came from March Regensburg university.
A group of 25 members from Bidar attended a workshop at RIVER
From April 15, RIVER hosted 15 AIF fellows and staff members along April with AIF's Learning and Migration Program (LAMP) team for an exposure visit and workshop.
External workshops:
6 day workshop was held in Patna. A group of 25 members attended for June this workshop to learn RIVER MGML pedagogy. The workshop was sponsored by Plan International
SSA invited RIVER team to Jalna from Maharashtra for two days to Feb present RIVER methodology.
Green ply organization invited RIVER team to Nagaland for two days to March present RIVER methodology.
Teachers enrichment activities:
Teacher’s picnic: REC staff went for a day picnic to Horsely hills. Teachers played various games and other fun activities.
Staff tour: In January, RIVER/REC team went on a trip to Gujarat. The team visited various historical places in Ahmedabad, Dwaraka and Somnath. It was a fun team building week for the entire team.
Health assessment training: Dr. Kartik sir trained our teachers for doing health assessment to the students. This training helped teachers how to identify vision, hearing and health issues of the students.
Art workshop: A teacher student, Ms. Elke from Regensburg, Germany conducted an art workshop for our teachers. Teachers learned how to do sculpting, drawing portraits, shadow drawing and other fun and creative activities that can be used in the classroom.
Awards and achievements Zayed finalists: REC was selected as one of the global high school finalist from Asia from the Zayed future Energy Prize. Our project proposal was to run the REC campus completely on Solar Energy. M. Sireesha and her father Mr. Gangulappa, RV teacher Mrs. Kavita Krishna represented REC at the finalist workshop in Abu Dhabi.
Times of India finalists:RIVER was shortlisted for the prestigious Times of India for their Social Impact Awards.The shortlist, after experts' evaluation, consists of 40 entries distributed over the five sectors as follows: Education, Health, Livelihoods, Environment, and Advocacy & Empowerment.
Ethiopian government and Unicef of Ethiopia invited our director Mr. Padmanabha Rao to make a presentation on the philosophy, methodology, achievements and challenges of the “RIVER MGML” program, its scalability as well as its suitability for mobile communities or communities with no schools or children who cannot attend school regularly. Our director shared the information about various programs/ evaluations, research and results achieved by our programs in other countries and how they have helped children, teachers and school leaders. Based on the presentation the Ministry may decide to go into further discussion and work out a partnership agreement for longer term support to the Ethiopian program.
Financials 2014 15 INCOME INR
Donations including Sponsorships 6,781,000.00 Inter Unit Contribution 439,500.00 Interest on Corpus & Development Fund 3,054,510.00 Interest on Savings 143,029.00
Total 10,418,039.00
EXPENDITURE INR
Salaries (Teaching, non teaching staff) 8,298,562.50 School Activities (food & Nutrition, teaching materials, sports, field trips and extracurricular activities) 1,031,432.00 Administration 973,889.00 Depreciation 646,926.00
Total 10,950,809.50
Excess expenses over Income ( 532,770.50)
Rishi Valley Rural Education Center Rishi Valley Education Centre Krishnamurti Foundation India Rishi Valley517352 Madanapalle,Dist.Chittoor, Andhra Pradesh,INDIA Phone:+ 918571280622/280582 Fax: + 918571280261 Email:[email protected], Please visit : www.riverrv.org