Madhav Chavan of Pratham at Asia Society

I heard Mr. Madhav Chavan give a wonderful talk on Pratham and the Read India movement sweeping India. By 2010, 60 million kids will have been reached through the integrated schools program.

The Read India program was started in 1997 and 70 million kids have been impacted by Jan 2007. Pratham asked the government to publish the data on education in India.
In 2005 86% of India was surveyed. And 90% of the children did go to school. But Pratham found that 50% of that school going population was not reading even at a first grade level.

Also the percentage of kids in the Southern states were reading at a lower level than kids in the Northern states.

He compared the Read India program to Teach for America program. He said he had started this project with a simple idea of doing the right thing. This had lead to volunteers agreeing to tutor young kids within their communities. The volunteering made the teachers feel important within the community, by giving them a role and status in the village.

He quoted Lao Tzu, who said about children, love them, build on what they know and let them think they have figured it out for themselves, that is empowerment.

He gave an example of the Read India program in Chattisgarh State, that was successful because of people's initiative and government's participation.

By publishing the ASER report (more about this on an earlier blog post), the governement was brought to task on the quality or lack of good education that it, is providing. Outcomes are as important as outlays. Pratham is successful because they can show what the problem is and help with the solution.

He felt it was important to empower others, without feeling that you were being dis empowered. Pratham needs to be independent of government control, therefore it prefers independent funding.

They have some videos on YOU TUBE Angreezi from A to Z, which shows how they are teaching English to children in Himachal Pradesh.

They also have some bridge programs for children 6 through 14 and they have an adult education program called Siksha Ke Badle Me Siksha. You teach someone for 6 months and we will teach you for 3 months what you do not know. They were also toying with the idea of a finishing school and learning labs. Pratham has a successful mobile library project running in the slums of Delhi.

Indian corporate houses were doing a lot to help Pratham, along with Major American foundations like google. But he felt the corporates could be allocating many more funds than they do.

Mr. Chavan's steps for success were -:

1. Trust people that you work with.

2. Do not try to control things and people.

3. Every step you take is a step against failing. Social capital is where people belong to each other, they feel accountable.

He felt in India change was possible because of less structures, regulations and restrictions.

Asia Society blurb.
United States of America (Press Release) June 6, 2008 -- Education is the responsibility of the government. But, what happens when governments do not deliver? In 2005, the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER), a survey of children’s learning levels facilitated by Pratham, India’s largest non-profit in the area of primary education, revealed that although more than 94% of children were enrolled in school, learning levels were low. In 2007, Pratham launched the Read India movement with the ambitious goal of teaching all children in India how to read, write and do arithmetic by 2009. Pratham has today mobilized volunteers in almost 300,000 villages across India and has formed partnerships with over 15 state governments to improve the quality of teaching in schools. Over 14 million children have benefited from the first 6 months of the campaign.

Dr. Madhav Chavan, Founder and Director of Programs for Pratham, will speak about how ASER and Read India, initiatives led by people, are bringing about social change on a large scale. More broadly, he will speak about how this education movement has become a learning school for a model of democracy in which the government is an effective instrument of the people and not an inadequate master.