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Pratham
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Pratham believes in citizens coming together to ensure that India's children have a better future. The organization is based on a triangular partnership: the government, the corporate sector and the citizens. In many cities, the corporate leaders have taken the lead, the government has responded by opening its schools and sharing its facilities, and the community volunteers, mostly young enthusiastic women from slums, help implement the Pratham programs. Pratham believes in working with the government to bring about large scale and rapid changes. The programs therefore aim to supplement and not supplant the governmental efforts in universalizing primary education. Pratham has constantly been guided by the belief that solutions to fill the gaps in the education system should be available even in the remotest part of the country - from the toughest terrains, to violence affected regions. These models should be low-cost so that they can be implemented anywhere and scaled up to achieve large scale impact. Pratham has demonstrated through their various programs that large scale mobilization around the issue of learning is not only possible, but also essential in order to address the overall issue of education in the country. The Pratham team comprises of educationists, development professionals, media persons, corporates, workers, activists, PhDs, MBAs, CAs, civil servants, bankers, corporate professionals, consultants, who all bring their experiences and perspectives to the organization and are unified by the common vision of improving the future of our children. |
| CONTENTS |
| Vision and Mission |
| Pratham's mission is to ensure "Every Child in School and Learning Well ". The organization is founded on the firm belief that education is the fundamental right of every child and no child should be deprived of this basic right simply because he/she does not have access to it or does not have the resources to realize his/her dreams. |
| History |
Unlike most other NGOs which are born out of the enterprise of only a few individuals, Pratham was established as a Public Charitable Trust in 1994 by the Commissioner of the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai, UNICEF and several prominent citizens of the country. Central to the massive expansion of Pratham's work has been a whole new way of approaching the education problem in India and a new way of implementing programs to create a national impact. All of their programs are designed to ensure that:
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| Methods and Programs |
| The Area Approach |
| Adopted for the delivery of their programs in urban areas. The "area approach" was designed to "turn communities around" so that the first step for the universalization of elementary education could be firmly taken. In this approach an entire community is selected for the interventions. This is better than a scattered approach where it is difficult to track children who drop out from the programs. Low income slum pockets or villages of approximately 250 to 300 households are demarcated. Often such pockets are contiguous to each other so that targeted stretches of slums achieve goals of every child going to school and every child acquiring basic literacy numeracy skills within a time bound manner. |
| Learn to Read |
| L2R is an accelerated learning technique targeted at teaching both in-school and out-of-school children how to read in 4- 8 weeks. It has been conceptualized as a non-linear method where the children are exposed to multiple stimuli to help improve their learning levels. Pratham has come up with an integrated activity ("say something; do something; read something and write something")in which learning is rapid. The technique is based on the principle that when children are engaged in a variety of activities which have implicit interconnections, they make the interconnections and these snowball into a larger skill. This is "learning by doing" in action. |
| The Annual Status of Education Report(ASER) |
| Facilitated by Pratham, ASER(meaning impact in Hindi) is the largest household survey undertaken in India by people outside the government. It annually measures the enrollment as well as the reading and arithmetic levels of children in the age group of 6-14 years. ASER is carried out by a local organization or institution in each rural district in the country, using a common set of tools and a common sampling frame. |
| Read India |
Pratham's flagship program, Read India, helps to improve the reading, writing and basic arithmetic skills of the children in the age group of 6-14 years. Findings of ASER 2005 and 2006 revealed that a significant percentage of children could not read, write and even do basic arithmetic. Read India was therefore launched on a national scale in 2007 to help achieve the following objectives:
Read India seeks to catalyze existing resources and energize structures to strengthen children's learning. The campaign is being executed with the help of school teachers, anganwadi workers and volunteers, who are mobilized and trained by Pratham teams. While the school teachers work inside their schools, volunteers and anganwadi workers work with children and their mothers outside school. Partnerships have been forged with 11 state governments for the implementation of the program. |
| Computer Aided Literacy (CAL) Program |
| Research across the world, conducted by IBM, has shown comprehensively that the use of IT in early learning has a positive impact on children's concentration, application, engagement, motivation and attainment. The aim of the CAL program is to reach out to all the children from disadvantaged backgrounds, who do not have the opportunities for exposure to IT like other children. Pratham aims to spread the vast knowledge of computers among these children according to their age. The main aims of the program are:
Such projects are in active collaboration with professionals, financial institutions, clubs, educational institutions and local community officials. These efforts will provide kids freedom, practical knowledge and develop responsibility in line with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. |
| English program |
| The English Program targets children in the age group of 8-14 years and helps build their basic conversational skills and their ability to read simple texts with comprehension. At the end of this 8 month program children learn to pronounce alphabets and 'known' words correctly and build a vocabulary comprising of approximately 750 words and 1000 sentences. They also learn to ask 15 different types of 'wh' questions ('where', 'what' etc). |
| Pratham Council for Vulnerable children |
| A large number of working children pose a barrier to our mission of "every child in school and learning well." Pratham Council for Vulnerable Children has been working since 2001 with vulnerable and working children to help them receive basic education and live a better life. The Council's programs include prevention, rehabilitation, repatriation, rescue and education of vulnerable and working children. The Council also plays a key role in influencing polices related to working children. PCVC has become a key partner with state governments in drafting official protocol in dealing with rescued children and advising legislation concerning child labour. In addition, they are working on replicable task force models with the government and advocacy and policy changes to ensure that the cities that they are working in are Child Labour Free. |
| The Skilling Initiative |
| This program is targeted at the economically disadvantaged youth in the 18-30 year age group. India has a large percentage of youth who have not been able to complete their formal education and also do not have the required vocational skills to be gainfully employed. At the same time, there is a large percentage of youth who are underemployed due to the lack of awareness about the opportunities in the market. Train youth in market relevant skills such as banking, agriculture, hospitality etc. and Help them start their own businesses. |
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