Vizianagaram 2002-03

VIJAYA PRATHAM - The first major rural based educational initiative of Pratham

The Pratham operations in Vizianagaram is called the Vijaya Pratham. The operations in Vizianagaram started in January, 2001 with Pratham Mumbai Educational Initiative's guidelines and guidance. To begin with Vijaya Pratham covered 163 villages of Vizianagaram District covering 4 mandals. This is the first major rural area based educational initiative of Pratham in India, the aim being the same as in other parts of India "Every Child in School and Learning Well".

The journey of Vijaya Pratham over a period of these 2 years, in Vizianagaram, has been quite spectacular. Within a short period of time it has been able to gain the confidence of the local administration and the people. The District Collector Mr. Rajat Kumar I.A.S. is the Chairman of our programme.

In the first year, Vijaya Pratham received valuable support from Pratham Mumbai to run the Balsakhi programme. The Balsakhis were selected on merit and trained to be decision makers. They are a fairly young lot, within the age group of 20-35 years and are very motivated and energetic. The first job of the Balsakhis was to change the attitude of the government school teachers, who were so reluctant to permit the Balsakhis to be part of the teaching programme in the government schools.

Till December 2002 Vijaya Pratham has 4,483 students on its roll. In the last two years 140 drop out students were also taken back to school. This time round, however, they have shown keen interest in learning and have been very regular to the classes.

The support that we have received from the locals is immense. In 24 villages the villagers have built temporary sheds to provide the Balsakhis with additional teaching space. The villagers and the local politicians have even shared 10% of the total cost incurred.

The Vijaya Pratham core team has been pretty active in this period. They have prepared 81 sets of display cards for Telegu and Maths to make the learning process easy. Two text books were also written for Telegu and Maths for remedial teaching. The Maths book has been adopted by the government of Andhra Pradesh for remedial teaching. As part of the accelerated learning programme, incorporating the guidelines from the book published in Kannada by Akshara and Pratham, a book in Telegu has also been published. In the monthly cluster meetings Balsakhis were trained to prepare low cost or no cost teaching materials.

To improve the reading ability of the children Vijaya Pratham has started 163 village libraries in the homes of the Balsakhis. These books were collected through an advertisement in a local magazine.

The District collector Shri. Rajat Kumar IAS, visited the Balasakhi centers recently. He was presented with an overall view of Vijaya Pratham activities and the reading material that our team has prepared for "Padho Bharat" (READ INDIA programme).

The Government B.E.D College has agreed to monitor, evaluate and assess Vijaya Pratham activities for efficiency.

Within a short span of time our Balsakhis have really become 'Gram Sakhis', friends of village. Their presence has become so important to the society that some have even been elected as 'village sarpanches' and some have been inducted in the government committees on education, health etc. Their assistance was also sought in Janmabhoomi, pulse polio and health programmes.

We are still short of funds not only to expand our programmes to other areas but even to run the current programmes. The village libraries could also do with more books.

Contacts :
B.S.R Murthy - murthybsr@rediffmail.com 08965-85339 (T)
SAIPADMA - saipadma@sify.com
S. RAO - srao@shanthabiotech.com