Working in Bihar has been both very challenging and satisfying for Pratham. The state had an extremely high percentage of out-of-school children, a high rate of female illiteracy and also a high incidence of child labour. Against this background Pratham started operations in 1999 through a bridge course designed to mainstream out-of-school children in Patna. Over the years, the scope of Pratham’s programs has widened and today it works with children in 28 districts of the state. In these years, Pratham’s collaboration with the Bihar state government has grown and strengthened and today most of our interventions are being implemented through a close collaboration with the government. In 2006, Pratham in collaboration with the Bihar State Education Department and UNICEF launched SANKALP, a program aimed at mainstreaming out-of-school children in 7 districts. Encouraged by the response, Read India was merged with the goals of SANKALP in the state.

The key programs undertaken in Bihar include the following:

Direct Programs: Pratham runs Balwadis, libraries and Balwachan classes in the cities of Patna, Munger and Hajipur reaching to approximately 10,000 children through classes and 13,000 children through the libraries every month.

Read India: : As mentioned above Read India objectives were merged with those of SANKALP in Bihar. The program is running is running in 28 districts and 35411 villages covering upto 58,00,000 children.

Shiksha ke Badle Shiksha Program: Still in the nascent stages, the program is currently educating children aged 11-14 to impart Std 5 level competencies. These children shall in turn teach the younger kids in their slums for Std 2 level competencies. At least 30% of the children currently being benefited are out of school children.

Gyanshala: residential program for rescued child labourers: The Gyanshala program has been in existence since 2006 and today we are running 6 Residential schools for rescued child laborers. Approximately 270 boys aged 8-15 are benefiting from the program. Almost 240 of these children are now in school. In the residential schools, the children are provided with education, sports training, extra curricular activities and vocational training. Over the last two years, these children have shown their potential both in the academic and the sports arena. These children are now also getting themselves acquainted on the basics of computers.

Brick Kilns Children program: This was started in 2008 and is targeted at mainstreaming children in the agegroup of 6-14 years from brick kilns laborer’s family. The program is covering over 1500 such children.

Computer Classes: 20 Computer teaching classes are in operation in Rohtas, Nalanda, Sitamarhi and Kishenganj districts. Summer Camp volunteers, Cluster Resource persons and other people directly linked to education are the major beneficiaries of this program. The volunteers are being taught the basics of computers, free of cost.

Bachpan: is the only newspaper of it’s kind and aims at influencing the reading habit. 50,000 copies of the newspaper are distributed to 10,000 government schools in 7 districts of the state every month

Flood Relief Program: Pratham is a formal education partner of the Bihar government in carrying out educational activities in the relief camps. In Collaboration with UNICEF and the state government, Pratham ran alternative schools in almost all the mega camps of the flood affected districts. Pratham teachers also visited the smaller camps and carried out teaching learning activities.