Education Activities

There were a lot of education related needs that we supported in the medium-term relief phase.  They can be categorized into

Educational Supplies: We provided thousands of children across all the villages with school uniforms, school bags, notebooks, pens, pencils, geometry boxes, slates and tiffin boxes.  In many villages we provided balwadis with toys and educational materials.  In several schools we also provided water jugs, tumblers, kodums, etc. 

Scholarship and School Fees:  We provided school and college fees for almost 200 students.  The Government had passed an order waiving the tuition fees for children from the Tsunami villages – but they had not waived the special fees and the book fees etc that several private schools continued to charge.  We organized support for these balance fees in several schools (which was itself quite substantial).

Pre-primary Activities: We had earlier mentioned that we had constructed 8 balwadis. In these and in other balwadis we provided a lot of toys and games for children.  In 2 of the balwadis we organized drinking water through bore wells with support from the villagers themselves.  In all the centers, the government’s ICDS program was being run from our balwadis.  Many other NGOs also ran balwadi programs in these centers.

Apart from this, we worked closely with all the government balwadi centers – organizing pre-primary games and learning activities.  We started toy centers for children in several areas villages.  We prepared and printed a pre-primary activity book and trained volunteers from these villages and also several balwadi workers on these activities.  We also started a Pre-primary Toy Van that has so far organized 40 sessions with about 800 children on story telling, drawing, crafts, puzzles and other educational games and activities.  We also provided a similar toy van to Vidyarambam (an NGO we had been working with earlier) for use in the pre-primary centers in their villages in Nagai.  But as they had got help from a donor for a bigger toy van, they later returned the van back to us for use in other areas.

Primary and Secondary School Support Activities: There are a lot of different activities that have been going on in this category. We have started (and are starting) a large number of village libraries with materials for primary and secondary school children. We have been intensively training a number of volunteers from the Tsunami areas themselves on running support centers and helping children with tuition classes.  We have also trained many of them on doing science experiments.  These volunteers have been now going to about 40 schools and demonstrating these activities in class.  We also organized a teacher training program for several government school teachers. Recently the District Education Officer in Kanchipuram saw our classes and was very impressed and passed a circular to allow these classes in all the government schools.  We purchased 1000 math kits from Navnirmiti and provided these with training to a large number of support centers and night schools that are helping children in these villages.  We have identified schools without sufficient teachers and are organizing PTA teachers in some of these schools. We also painted several school blackboards and boards on the walls for children to use.  Apart from our direct work in this, we have been working closely with several NGOs - providing them with training and support for running primary support classes, libraries and science experiment programs in schools and villages in Nagai, Tiruvarur, Tirunelvelli, Palaverkadu, etc.  We also purchased a large number of books from Tulika Books and Asha for Education, which we have repacked into library kits and started libraries in a large number of villages.