Education
Education is one of the most powerful instruments for reducing poverty and inequality as it lays the foundation for sustained development. As sustainability is concerned, Swadeep believes in to build a strong base for a long lasting age of the building of knowledge and well-being. Starting the efforts from pre-primary education (Anganwadis), we have now reached to higher secondary schools with the vision to support children complete their schooling. Making the learning more joyful and more fruitful with developing different strategies according to the needs of the classrooms especially after the COVID-19 pandemic.
Pre-Primary Education:
(Work With Anganwadi)
While ‘primary education provides the fundamentals of all formal learning’, pre-primary learning may be called the foundation for both education and personal development. The information of formal pre-primary education in rural India is comparatively less, although the family and community function as a broader arena for holistic learning. Swadeep aims to strengthen pre-primary education system through Capacity Building of Stakeholders. The approach is to make pre-primary education more joyful for the ICDS Toddlers by introducing a multi- level learning support program. We have created a well-structured curriculum and provided resource materials which cover eight key aspects of Pre-primary education:
- Approaches to Learning
- Social and Emotional Development
- Mathematics
- Creativity
- Science and Technology
- Social Studies
- Language, Literacy and Communication
- Physical Development & Health
The strategy is to join hands with Anganwadi Workers/Helpers and Parents of ICDS Children as both plays an important role. Efforts are made to help the AWW and AWH with adequate pre-primary pedagogy and support with educational aids so they can carry out some well thought, well planned pre-primary educational activities with ease and according to the need of classroom.
Elementary Education:
A study suggests that over 95% of Indian children in the age group 6 to 14 are enrolled in schools. Although these children have been in school for several years, many have not acquired the foundational skills like basic reading and arithmeticwhich are essential and very much crucialto be in the flow of academic main stream. The real challenge is to identify and enable those children to acquire foundational literacy and numeracy in a quick and sustainable way so that they get a real chance to complete the elementary stage in a meaningful way. An educational support program is launched by Swadeep in public primary schools to improve the academic level of students suffering from this problem as well as to increase and maintain the quality of education for main stream learners.
Learning Resource Centers (LRC): A dedicated team of skilled teachers has been formed and made available at every identified school by Swadeep. The team addresses learning deficits of children by creating a learning intervention encompassing the diversified learning needs of primary grade children. The LRC focuses on basic education support, particularly in the areas of literacy and numeracy, with the help of activity based learning methods like; group project works, games, art & craft, stories, rhymes, action songs and any many morewith the use of appropriate high quality teaching learning materials. The team also tries to check the learning levels of children after certain period of time to provide a better and personalized learning experience. This whole package aims to bring students at least to their age appropriate academic levels.
Digital Education: The penetration of digital education into the hinterland and rural areas is evolving fast. The outreach of educational programs is improving day by day with the digitalization of education. Swadeep, to promote digital education in rural area provides the platform where students get the opportunity to learn digitally. Under various field based projects Swadeep established smart classes for govt. school children with necessary technical equipment and grade wise educational content in it. The teachers of these identified schools are trained to operateand use the smart class according to classroom needs. The scope is also open for students tolearn individually by smart class.
Beyond Elementary:
High School Support: Secondary high school education serves as a link between the elementary and higher education. This phase is comparatively very much crucial and vulnerable as it needs to work with the adolescents, whom are very much trying to be aware of themself and to explore the world full of new things. At this stage of academics, Swadeep is trying to help them to get better learning and to better shape themselves for future opportunities. Swadeep is running some educational projects which provide teachers support, tutor classes, educational materials, career counseling and much more.
Adult Literacy: Is basic formal education is only for the children? Not really! Some reports say that most women are unable to read or write In Rural areas. Hence they are unable to read any signs, health warnings, general information, even basic number operations seems difficult to them. Some cases of exploitation are also in front of our opened eyes because of not being aware of the rights of an individual in the working area. Adult Literacy class aims to overcome this roadblock by providing quality literacy programs to the women in remote rural areas. Touching a milestone of teachingreading and writing of 5th-grade level, women are empowered with the knowledge like habit of saving money, importance of girls’ education, finding & keeping sustainable employment.
Open Schooling: Open schooling aims towards to provide an opportunity to children who are unable to attend conventional schools access for any reason. It provides the same education as those who do attend traditional schools. Swadeep observed that the school dropout ration was very high in a particular concentrated under privileged area in Gujarat and tried to transform the mindset of community by motivating the youth to complete their studies from institutions which promotes Open Schooling such as- ‘Baba sahib Ambedkar Open University’, ‘National Institute of Open Schooling’ etc. Swadeep identified the potential youth from village and helped them with admission as well as preparation of exams. Swadeep continued this effort which turned surprisingly positive as the results came out. The youth is now achieving more traditional academic levels and motivating others to do so.
We would love to expand our scope of work with other states to share our expertise in for school level computer literacy, Science-Mathematics on wheel, Self-defense training for women and of course, in the field of training and capacity building.
The strategy is to join hands with Anganwadi Workers/Helpers and Parents of ICDS Children as both plays an important role. Efforts are made to help the AWW and AWH with adequate pre-primary pedagogy and support with educational aids so they can carry out some well thought, well planned pre-primary educational activities with ease and according to the need of classroom.