Jankalyan

Reaching the Un-reached children:
Education is the backbone of the Society - Janakalyan believes. It runs education institution for education of poor people, who cannot afford their children’s education in the nearby cities. Despite the availability of government schools, the parents send their children to fields to EARN instead of Schools to LEARN. To this serious and hazardous issue, Janakalyan responded by opening Special schools for child labors. Janakalyan has now realized the seriousness of the issue and has planned a full-fledged program to eliminate the issue from the area with multi-pronged activities. Child Labor Elimination Program (CLEP) is one such program to eradicate the child labor issue from the area and provide free & compulsory education to all the children below the age of 14 years. It is a Ministry of Labor supported program.

Slow Learners Promotion:
There are many slow learners in rural government schools, yet others are poor in mathematics. Janakalyan initiated an intervention in 20 villages of Sindhanur targeting 300 slow learners to help them to learn at par with other front benchers. The tools used are story cards, ARP, 3Rs, remedial coaching before and after the school hours, activity based learning, etc.

Self Sustainable Balwadies:
Pre primary education is the foundation to child’s life. Janakalyan initiated an intervention to start pre primary education centers in 20 villages of Sindhanur taluk. The aim is to cultivate the habit of learning from the early days so that they do not drop out and also a strong foundation is laid in the beginning itself. The local girls are trained and helped to establish such balwadies in their localities. Activity based learning is the method of teaching in these balwadies.

Moving Library:
A moving library is store of small books for the kids catering to different tastes of the children from story to general knowledge books. These moving libraries are attached to Balwadies those are started in the villages. The students can pay Re.1 and read the book for a day.

Major activities taken up under Jan Shiksha-

ARP (Accelerated Reading Program)
3 R (Reading, Writing, Arithmetic)
Child Labor Eradication
Self Sustainable Bal Vidyapeeth
Regular education institutions
Adult Education
SWASTHH PLUS – Community Monitoring Prpgram
Hostels for Rural Girls
Higher Education for dropout girls (stipend)
Village Planning
REACH (Reaching and Education for At-risk Children)

Maa Sarada Pre University College:
Sindhanur Rehabilitation Project in Raichur district of Karnataka is a location which was established by Government of India in 1968-70 to accommodate about 1000 Bengali families, who flew from the then East Pakistan in the aftermath of division of the country. Socio-economically these victims of partition are still very backward as their livelihood is totally dependent on the piece of land that the government provided as rehabilitation package. Surrounding these colonies, there are few villages with local Kannadigas, whose socio-economic position is no better than these communities.

Due to withdrawal of social reservation, the communities are doubly deprived in education, employment, economic uplifting and social development. The students are deprived off their constitutional benefits in admission, fee concession, hostel facility etc. and also in employment. Their parents are also deprived from the government schemes as they are not covered under socially reserved schemes though they are basically socially backward community.

A study of these villages was done recently by Janakalyan team to understand the educational scenario and found that almost 94% of the children complete their matriculation in the local schools; of this, about 60-67% students pass the 10th (SSLC) Board examination, maximum share being of the girls. However, hardly 11-15% of these passed out students go for XI (PUC) of which may be 1-2% are girls. In these 42 years, hardly 5-7 (1 female) students have completed their PG while about 60-70 (6-10 female) students their degree courses out of almost 25,000 people over here. Those who have completed their degree or PG, either their parents are educated or they are financially sound.

While prioritizing the reasons for dropping out from mainstream education, the community felt that financial burden and distantly located college is the major factor for depriving their children from education. If these are taken care, almost 86% of the parents are ready to send their children for post-metric education. Finally, it is concluded that the need for intervention is either to start a college in the nearby locality or to provide assistance to the students to meet out the expenditures for their college education with a secured accommodation in the nearby city. But with any amount of motivation, they are not ready to send their girl children to city for education without a believable guardian, even if the stipend/scholarship is arranged.

If they do not go to the college for education, the only alternative left to them is to marry her as early as possible; keeping them at home under constant watch is also a difficult job for them. Thus, child marriage is prevailing in these colonies even at the age of 14-16 years of age. Consequence is early pregnancy, early mother, health problems to both mother and child and so on………………

This peculiar context demands a unique intervention to Ensure post-metric education to rural youths & adolescent girls to enhance age at marriage from 14 to 18 years thus avoiding early pregnancy and its consequences. Ensuring post-metric education to this age group would resolve the problem in totality through establishment of a college and the result is Maa Sarada Pre University College.