Baliapal is the ancestral village of Rajendra Kumar Rana (Rajendra Ji), founder of Alternative for Rural Movement (ARM). From his early childhood, he has seen the destruction caused by Baliapal’s annual floods. Rajendra Ji grew up participating in relief work; through seeing varied approaches, he began to understand the importance of sustained long-term efforts for community improvement. Rajendra Ji began his long-term commitment to community improvement with educational reform. He and a few other social reformers founded ““Education for Rural Poor” in 1984 to improve literacy in the area. In 1989, Rajendra Ji established ARM as a more holistic approach to rural development encompassing health, education, and economic development.
Education:
ARM’s comprehensive educational intervention over the last ten years has contributed to a drastic reduction in primary school dropout rate from 66% to 30% in the Baliapal area.
ARM – together with a staff of five teachers, three part-time instructors and two teacher’s assistants – runs a “Model School.” This primary school (standards 1-5), founded in 1997, educates economically-disadvantaged students. ARM has also started evening classes on dance, music, singing, drama, visual arts, and craft. From time to time, ARM organizes health camps, science exhibitions, and various competitions. ARM also periodically invites experts from the area to speak about child rights, health, environment and other issues.
With the help of the government and private institutions, ARM has created need and merit-based scholarships for primary school students. ARM administers a scholarship examination and awards 100 children every year with study materials, a school uniform, and a bag.
In addition, ARM assisted 30 government primary schools to train teachers, to form children’s clubs, to develop youth leadership skills, and to engage parents in their child’s education. ARM has created the School Child Resource Development Centre (SCRDC) that manages the teachers training program. Over the past three years, SCRDC has trained 90 government school teachers on the use of visual aids, participatory methods of teaching, classroom discipline techniques, leadership skill training, and health/hygiene of children.
Women’s Empowerment:
ARM has organized 300 women’s self-help groups (SHGs) to develop leadership skills, raise legal rights awareness, and assist economic improvement.
SHG members primarily engage in saving and loan activities for personal and business use. ARM has mobilized a total savings of Rs. 10 million and credit of Rs. 54.2 million through its rural savings and credit endeavors. In the past two decades, ARM has assisted more than 1,300 women through its women self-employment initiatives and helped start micro-enterprises in vegetable cultivation, groundnut cultivation, petty shops, basket making, bamboo crafts and rice processing.
The SHG monthly meetings are also forums for discussions on members’ issues such as domestic violence or marital problems. SHG members participate in discussions and decision-making processes about local issues at the Gram Sabha (Village Council). SHG members help one another in finding resolutions.
For two decades, ARM has been committed to improving women’s literacy. ARM’s literacy campaigns have vaulted the women’s literacy rate from 5 % to 40%.
Village Health Committees:
ARM has formed a Village Health Committee (“Committee”) in 60 villages around Baliapal, to serve as a local council on health. The Committee consists of a local SHG leader, villagers, and government trained health workers to administer medicine for common ailments and provide consultation. ARM arranges information camps to educated villagers on health, sanitation, and care for pregnant women. The Committee provides information on combating recurrent illnesses such as diarrhea, malaria, respiratory tract infections, and communicable diseases.
In conjunction, ARM has been running a Primary Health Center (PHC) in village Paschimbad with two doctors, a pharmacist, an auxiliary nurse midwife, a lab technician, a project coordinator and an attendant. Every day, over 100 patients are treated at the center. The PHC also has emergency and delivery wards for critically-ill patients and pregnant women. The PHC organizes various information seminars and awareness programs such as focus group discussions, behavior change communication seminars, reproductive child health sessions, and information sessions for other government health service.
The Committees collaborate with and often refer patients to the Paschimbad PHC.
Need for Project:
At present in Baliapal, 30% of the children between ages 4 and 12 years do not attend school. ARM seeks to ensure 100 % school going primary level children. To achieve this goal, ARM seeks to improve its ability to retain existing students and to enroll more dropout children into schools. ARM wants to develop and implement an improved teaching methodology to engage students, expand the set of extracurricular activities designed to enrich the student culture, and engage the village community to motivate and support parents of dropout children to send them to school.
As an August 2010 Indicorps Fellow, you will strengthen ARM’s efforts to reduce the dropout rate in the village. Initially you will shadow and observe the teachers in the ARM Model School and the 30 ARM-associated government schools. You will concurrently research and develop new methods of participatory education. You will conduct teacher trainings and devise methods for a learning partnership between yourself and the government school teachers, implementing the new techniques side-by-side in the classroom.
These learning methods should be tailored to disinterested and at-risk students, as the main purpose of these methodological reforms is to reduce the rate of dropouts. Therefore, as you are developing new techniques and resources for use in the classroom you will need to immerse in your student’s communities to learn what motivates students outside of school. This will help you develop a curriculum that will hold students’ attention in classrooms.
You will be responsible for bolstering the existing set of extracurricular activities provided by ARM’s evening schools. Activities (such as dance, music, singing, drama, visual arts, and craft) should be utilized to create a broader sense of what it means to be a “student” and instill a sense of belonging among youth at-risk of dropping out. The extracurricular activities may be used to draw dropouts back into the educational system. You will need to identify local partners to help you improve these extracurricular activities.
As part of ARM’s desire to create a culture of excellence among its students, you will develop ideas for special events such as science fairs, health camps, invention conventions, spelling bees, etc. These events may be competitive, but they should also embody the idea of education as a process contributed to by all members of the community. You may also invite and host outside speakers who will contribute to the general knowledge of the community.
To bring more students into the schools, you will plan awareness campaigns in the community. This will include organizing meetings to elucidate advantages of education. You can engage the local government agencies and NGOs to support awareness campaign. It will be important that you explore common reasons for parents not sending children to school and find solution for them with the help of local community. You may consider using methods such as parent-teacher conferences, parents group formation, and community level educational events to expand the culture of the school into the wider community.
You will, towards the end of your Fellowship year, use your accrued experience and knowledge of the situation to advocate for more structural educational reforms, and will set up structures that will ensure the continued viability of your efforts.
Target Community:
Your target community will be children between the ages of 4 and 12 from the marginal and landless farmers and daily laborers family in the Baliapal area. Primary schools run from 10 am – 4 pm, Monday to Saturday. Children from the local community spend time helping families with agricultural and household work. Many local sports, storytelling, and folk arts are very popular among children.
Objectives:
• To reduce school dropout levels and encourage re-enrollment
• To develop and implement a more engaging curriculum
• To conduct teacher workshops, training, and implementation of methodology
• To expand and enhance ARM’s extracurricular activities, including classes, sports, and community-led events
• To organize a structure for parental involvement in the educational process
Challenges:
• Adjusting to different expectations and conceptions of education in India
• Engaging and empathizing with the motivations and life goals of the students and their families
• Navigating current leadership structure and school politics
Team-Based Model:
Each project is designed as a three-way partnership between you, Indicorps, and a partner organization. Each grassroots partner organization – in this case ARM – will be hosting two to four Fellows. Consequently, the August 2010 Fellowship will have both an individual and a team component.
As a team of Indicorps Fellows, your focus is to improve the effectiveness of the ARM’s programs in education, health and livelihood. Team members will focus on different areas including strengthening primary education, improving preventative health care and awareness, and supporting SHGs in better utilization of resources.
You will be provided accommodation in Earulia village near the ARM office. Simple vegetarian food will be provided. You will be expected to do your own laundry and help with household activities. The nearest major town Baliapal is 25 km from the village. Buses and jeeps service Baliapal from morning: 6 am to 11 pm. International calling facilities are available in the village. Internet can be accessed at the ARM office in Baliapal. For local transportation, you may use a bicycle or travel tandem with staff on motorcycles when available.
The language spoken at ARM is Oriya. For this project, a basic knowledge of Oriya is required. If you do not have basic knowledge of Oriya, you can still apply if you commit to learning the language before the start of your Fellowship year.
What excites you about this opportunity? What particular experiences have led you to want to do this project?
2.
You have spent two months re-engaging a ten year old boy who has dropped out of school. He seems to be excited about learning new things and he wants to be re-enrolled into the primary school. Unfortunately, his parents believe that there is no reason for him to go to school because he is destined to be a farmer. By having him at home, they will be able to use his help in the fields. How will you convince the child and his parents about the benefits of education?
3.
Describe a time when you had to convince people to do something for which they could not see the immediate benefits. What personal characteristics enabled you to succeed in this situation?
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