How it began
One of the core ideas of the organization is to develop models of community empowerment and skill building that are contextually relevant. With the pressure of increasing migration and depletion of the environmental resources in rural areas and it was becoming clear that working with communities and building awareness on their resources, lives and livelihoods are very critical. During interactions and with the communities, it also became clear to us that many of them were viewing education as having the potential for empowerment and mobility and were keen on enriching education for their children. Thus emerged the idea of learning centres in villages. Our first learning centre began in Vengamvaripalli in 2018.
Our centres today
Today, there are three learning centres in Vengamvaripalli, Kadathatlapalli and Devadoddi touching over 150 children studying in the government primary schools. The centres are run by educated young women in these villages, many of them with their own small children. They are trained in different teaching learning methods and are provided materials for making learning materials for children. Individual development of these community facilitators is prioritized and there are different training workshops and programs conducted for them. Our centres today are thriving learning environments, where children come eagerly, after school, to work and learn. While we work primarily with children in grades 1-3, often older children come to the centre to work on their school lessons, with support from the community facilitator. The children in the centres are supported to read and write and do math at their grade-appropriate levels. In addition, we have several activities and resources that encourage children to learn in different ways, including art and craft work.
A model of community-led education
The pandemic brought to us new ways of working, learning and living. When schools were closed and children could not be gathered for learning, overnight, millions of children in remote, rural areas were left with no access to any form of education for more than one and a half years. During these months, the learning centres in Vengamvaripalli and Kadathatlapalli functioned by bringing together small groups of children, keeping in mind safe physical distances, for learning. Sometimes these interactions were conducted in open areas in the village, on terraces and children were encouraged to come in small groups to keep in touch with their learning. The importance of this cannot be overstated. The continued presence of a learning environment has helped many children stay in touch with their learning and has helped to make the resumption of school education easier. As we complete the 5th year of our learning centre, we hope to make these centres more vibrant and expand their scope to include children of all ages and develop them as models of community-led education.
Moments from our work
