Indicorps /// 2010 Fellowship Application: Project Descriptions

Constructive Learning Environments

Background | The Project | Living | Special Restrictions

Location: Amravati, Maharashtra

Number of Fellows: 1

Language: Marathi

Background

A dozen girls from the kishori dal (adolescent girls group) lobbied the local government to provide state bus service for Jalka Jagtap village. The lack of public transportation had been a problem for the villagers for many years; students could not travel to school. In 2008, Apeksha Homoeo Society (Apeksha) had formed the Jalka Jagtap kishori dal to build cohesiveness, discuss community-level challenges, and collectively take responsibility for finding solutions. Apeksha has established dozens of collaborative kishori dals and bal gats (children’s groups) to enable young people to take ownership over their own futures.

Apeksha was established in 1980 by a group of young doctors to empower marginalized groups in the Amravati district of Maharashtra through community participation and collective decision-making. Today, the organization has expanded to a core staff team of 140 including both local talent and super-committed, transplanted professionals. Apeksha’s strength lies in the strong ties that its core team has built with the community.

Apeksha empowers young people to tackle broader issues on a local level. Apeksha has an unique structure that brings together the bal gats from a cluster of villages to form a children’s parliament. These parliaments meet on a regular basis and encourage youth to create their own solutions to deal with community challenges ranging from migration and health to natural resource management.

Apeksha’s key activities include children’s education and health. Apeksha discourages child labor, motivates community elders to emphasize the importance of education, and promotes sustainable livelihoods that give families the economic freedom to educate their children.

Need for Project:
Through its bal gats, kishori dals, Village Education Committees (VECs), and government teacher training interventions, Apeksha hopes to create a joyful society with socially-aware, literate, motivated young people.

Students face many challenges. Some must balance working in order to help support their families’ livelihoods. Most have no structured channels to voice their opinions or give back to the community. In addition, schools often use rote instructional methods that hardly engage students. Finally, many of the teachers do not speak the students’ first language, creating a communication gap in the classroom. Apeksha strives to bridge these challenges.

Apeksha facilitates trainings for government school teachers to enable them to create a positive learning environment in the classroom. VECs are local community groups that support and promote education in their communities. Bal gats and kishori dals give the children a forum to voice their opinions and to take leadership on social issues.

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The Project

As an August 2010 Fellow, you will strengthen various Apeksha educational initiatives in a cluster of ten villages. You will assist with the teacher trainings. You will engage with the bal gats and kishori dals. You will converse with the VECs and other community leaders/groups willing to support education. Your focus is to leverage the strengths of each of the respective groups and integrate them into a coordinated approach to improve the education system.

You should begin by understanding the educational landscape: get to know the teachers, the students, the parents, government education officers, and others who care about education. You should understand the motivations and aspirations of each. Try and make detailed observations without judgment. Present your observations to the bal gats and the kishori dals. Use their help in finding gaps in communication or understanding to devise a strategy to improve the educational processes for the village. Make sure you present a balanced view to all sides and help build links between the various communities.

Once you have a strategy, you should propose suitable trainings for the school teachers and a time frame for implementation. You should assist the teachers with planning, implementation, and feedback. You should engage the VEC in building community support, in monitoring and in evaluation. You should get periodic feedback from the bal gats and kishori dals in a way that completes the communications loop. Hopefully, through the process, you will strengthen channels of communication and build a more cooperative educational atmosphere that gives the children a voice and more responsibility in determining their own future.

Throughout the process, you will take careful notes and reporting your findings and outcomes so that you can share your learnings with Apeksha staff for future programming.

Target Community:
The target community consists of students, government teachers, and local village officials in the Dharni block of Amravati. Dharni is a tribal belt. The main source of livelihood is agriculture. The majority of the students are first generation learners.

Objectives:
• To improve educational outcomes in government schools
• To empower students to take ownership over their own education
• To increase community participation in local educational issues

Challenges:
• Collaborating productively with local government officials
• Managing multiple stakeholders (i.e., children, their parents, and their teachers) that might have competing interests
• Communicating effectively since the language spoken by the tribals is different from the language spoken in the district

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 Apeksha– 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 holistically improve the quality of life of tribals in the Dharni region. Team members will focus on different areas including improving quality of education in government schools and making agriculture sustainable.

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Living

You will be staying in a combination of village home stays and the AHS field office in the Dharni block. Simple vegetarian food will be provided. You will be expected to do your own laundry and assist with other household chores. Internet and international calling facilities are available in Dharni. For local transportation you will use government buses. The closest big town is Amravati, which is connected to Nagpur by train and bus. Nagpur is well connected to all major cities in the country by the road and railway network.

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Special Restrictions

The language spoken at Apeksha is Marathi, and the local dialect is Korku. For this project, a basic knowledge of Marathi is required. If you do not have basic knowledge of Marathi, you can still apply if you commit to learning the language before the start of your Fellowship year.

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Project Questions

1.	"Children are the world's most valuable resource and its best hope for the future” - JFK Describe a time when you learned a life lesson from a child.
2.	You need permission from the District Education Officer in order to implement curriculum changes at the government schools. Each time you go to the local government offices, they tell you to come back next week and speak to someone new. You begin to sense that they are avoiding your queries. How might you gain their trust and get the permission you need?
3.	Talk about a time when you have brought together multiple stakeholders in order to reach a common purpose. What was your role? What challenges did you face?