Ajmer, July 1975. With inspiration from Mahatma Gandhi’s campaign, railway employee Sri Sagar Mal Kaushik (Kaushik Ji) led relief efforts amidst flash floods. With a foundation in grassroots activism and more than ten years of service activities, Kaushik Ji then founded Rajasthan Mahila Kalyan Mandal (RMKM) in 1987. The organization was established to address issues of women’s empowerment, special education, health and livelihoods enhancement.
Today, RMKM runs nine programs in more than 80 villages and urban areas with a dedicated team of 75 staff members, including Kaushik Ji’s youngest son and daughter-in-law.
Kaushik Ji’s early days of service focused on education, with special attention to providing opportunities for mentally challenged children. This belief led to the establishment of two schools for the mentally challenged: Minu Manovakis Mandir (1989) in Chachiyawas and Sanjay Special School (2001) in Beawer. Collectively the schools have 450 students and 28 staff members; the former is a residential school. In 2005, RMKM organized the first ever state-level Special Olympics for mentally challenged children in the Ajmer district.
In addition to the aforementioned initiatives, RMKM has collaborated with the Room to Read program. Room to Read is a government-accredited program designed to promote literacy in rural India. RMKM aligned with the government in 2008 to bring the program to Ajmer district and has established 100 libraries thus far to promote reading habits in government school students.
Along with the organization’s education initiatives, RMKM has established the AWARE program (Advancement of Women in Rural Environment). The program has trained 487 women in handicrafts work. These women market their products at various exhibitions, outlets, and Mumal - the crafts centre in the RMKM campus. In order to help these women become financially independent, RMKM has formed 190 self-help groups (SHGs), which encourage savings and collective action. The SHGs have also resulted in more active female participation in local governance. For example, the women of Chachiyawas initiated the closing of an illegal alcohol shop in their community.
Over the years, RMKM has purposefully built a repertoire of programs that provides opportunities for local children and women to realize their potential.
Need for Project:
RMKM is one of the partner organizations of the Room to Read library program, a government accredited program designed to promote reading habits and literacy. Currently, RMKM runs fourteen libraries in the Kekri block of the Ajmer district to encourage the habit of reading in primary and middle school children. RMKM has adopted an activity-based learning model. While the main target group of the program is government school children, they also reached out to parents, teachers, and elected government officials. RMKM hopes to make the libraries sustainable and encourages community ownership within 3 years. For this, RMKM has been holding regular awareness building camps and meetings in the community.
When RMKM began this initiative, most children had heard of libraries by name but never visited such a place. When the first library officially opened in each school, the students were excited for the chance to read books they had never seen. The new libraries have already had an impact on the local education system. Students are more active and express a deeper interest in the curriculum. They enjoy checking out books and reading stories to their families as well. Reading has helped children grow confident; as a result, they are more eager to share their knowledge with others. Libraries have also helped increase overall academic performance, expose children to new ideas, and enable students and parents to discover new things about themselves.
Now, RMKM hopes to broaden the scope of the initiative by stimulating broader intellectual curiosity amongst the students. RMKM would like to foster leadership potential and creativity in the students by creating and implementing an activity-based learning curriculum in the schools.
As an August 2010 Indicorps Fellow, you will encourage the holistic development of students between 6th and 8th grade through reading and leadership development. You will be working directly with government school students and RMKM facilitators to achieve this goal. Initially, you should focus on understanding the ongoing Room to Read activities at RMKM and the functioning of the government school system. You might want to shadow the facilitator in the classroom, interact with the school teachers and the students. Most government school teachers have years of teaching experience and may be a valuable resource for understanding the school structure. Also, students are good way to build relationships with the community. You should organize home stays to understand the home environment and opportunities to inculcate reading habits.
Next, you should start developing an activity-based learning curriculum to improve the students’ vocabulary as well as to foster creativity, confidence, and leadership skills. You should focus on experiential learning for the students. You might want to co-organize events like children’s fairs, competitions for cognitive development, and games to develop reading habits. You should encourage the students to take a lead in planning the events. Simultaneously, you will design and conduct an informal study to assess the impact of the Room to Read program on the students and the schools.
Finally, you will analyze your study and share the findings with the school, RMKM, and the community with a constructive analysis of the impact so far, and how it can be further improved. At the same time, you should train the facilitators to continue implementing the curriculum developed after your departure.
Target Community:
The target community consists of government school students between the ages of 6 to 13 years, their parents and teachers. The majority of the students are from a rural background and are first generation learners.
Objectives:
• To inculcate reading habits in students and improve vocabulary
• To promote creativity, confidence, and leadership skills
• To increase the understanding of primary education and its importance amongst the community
• To sensitize the parents and teachers to the benefits of reading
Challenges:
• Navigating challenges that arise when working closely with government systems and institutions
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 RMKM – 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 strengthen the core RMKM programs and add a new level of innovation/creativity. Team members will focus on different areas including inculcating reading habits in government school children, further advancing the women’s self-help groups and promoting inclusive education amongst mentally challenged and mainstream primary school students.
You will be staying at the field office in the Kekri block of Ajmer district. You will be provided with simple living arrangements in a rural environment. You will be cooking your food with the local staff in the office. You will be responsible for your own laundry and assisting with household chores. Internet and international calling facilities are available in Kekri. For local transportation, you will use government transportation, shared jeeps, or traveling tandem with staff on motorcycles. Ajmer, the nearest big city, is 80 km away from Kekri and connected via bus. Ajmer is well connected to all major cities in the country by the road and railway network.
The language spoken at RMKM is Hindi, and the local dialect is Marwari. For this project, a basic knowledge of Hindi is required. If you do not have a basic knowledge of Hindi, you can still apply if you commit to learning the language before the start of your Fellowship year.
Prior experience and interest in working with children between the ages of 6 and 13 would be helpful for this project.
Share an experience where you have had to work closely with people whose backgrounds were different from yours. What were some personal challenges you faced in this situation? Give examples of how you overcame those challenges.
2.
The younger children (ages 6-10) in your community would much rather play or watch television than read. You have found that they have very little supervision at home, so therefore the motivation to read will have to come from the children themselves. How will you make reading fun for these children?
3.
What role have books played in your life? What does reading mean to you?
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