Captain Indraani Singh - Secretary, Literacy India; Commander Airbus 300, Indian Airlines

The primary goal of Literacy India is on sensitizing and involving people for the cause of children, while your primary objective is to identify support and nurture underprivileged children by the way of education. Where is your focus ?
How do you divide time and resources ?

The first part of working with people is handling the situation at a larger level, having indirect beneficiaries through the people who have been sensitized by us. The second part of direct action with children is about empowering children through education in the areas where Literacy India can directly reach. Therefore, it is about creating an involvement drive that extends beyond our direct action programme.

To throw more light on it, when we started, the only people involved were the founding trustees and few odd volunteers. All of us were professionals from diverse field, with busy job schedules, but still we took time out. It made us think, if we could make space in our calendars, others could also. Therefore, the sensitization bit went into the core of Literacy India. We believe that the sensitized people don't necessarily have to be part of Literacy India to make a difference; one could make small beginning by facilitating education of under aged maids (try how much you cannot avoid working of children due to financial constraints) or children of our domestic helps. We tell people to join hands and the family of cause ambassador grows.

If you look at our primary goal, "Create a movement within India where by sensitive persons from all backgrounds can contribute to build an environment where by children can regain their lost identity." 70% of Literacy India's time and a greater percentage of resources are spent in ensuring the last few words-'children can regain their lost identity', which implies the direct action with children, through our various non-formal and experimental education programmes. So while 30% of the time goes in spreading the ripple, the 70% is spent on creating it in first place.

You mentioned about Literacy India's 70% focus on non-formal and experimental education programmes.
Tell us more abut it.

We are currently working in 6 different locations in various parts of Gurgaon district, now commercial capital of NCT Delhi. For the familiar, these centers are in Chauma village, Palam Vihar, Sarai village, Daulatabad, Bajgera, and Rajendra Park. We run at Chauma village the Vidyapeeth, our non-formal school for children.and also 2 rooms given to us by Chiranjiv Bharti School at Palam Vihar. The rest 4 are vocational training centers.

We have given a distinct name to our various programmes like Vidyapeeth, Pathshala, Gurukul, Karigari, Jagrukta, Shiksharth and Kanya. The Vidyapeeth programme is our primary education in full time school. This was started in year 2001 at Chauma village. The mid day meal programme is here provided with the help of Radisson Hotel and other supporters. It reaches out to 228 children.

The Pathshala programme is ahas two programaone is remedial education programme.and the other is basic literacy program for the children who are working in the households(strength is right now 50) More than 100 children from the neighboring slums attending school up to class XII come for evening classes at the Chiranjeev Bharti School and also at the Chauma village. Our pathshala with its basic literacy program has reached out over 600 children.

The Gurukul programme is for talented children who want to pursue higher education. Currently, 50 children are getting benefited from this programme. In Gurukul programme donors sponsor children. The Shiksharth programme is the concept of theatre in education which has benefited more than 1700 children. The Karigari programme is about providing vocational and life skill training . The Jagrukta programme is awareness building and community out-reach programme.

Is Jagrukta programme your main programme? How self-sustainable is it ?
Do you have a corpus fund for it or all is dependent on the sponsorships ?

The Jagrukta programme is a part of our various programmes, but certainly not the main one. Jagrukta as the word suggests is about creating awareness and sensitizing people. As I had mentioned earlier that direct action with children takes 70% of our time, hence Jagrukta cannot be the flag-ship programme. Although, it is important in the sense, it makes the family of like minds swell. The operational aspect of Jagrukta is through street plays followed by discussion with the crowd. It uses this medium to spread awareness. I will explain how it supports our main programme of education. We operate our of a red light area. Besides prostitution the rampant problem here is of alcoholism and juvenile delinquency. The area is fast becoming insecure as unemployed and unguided children are taking to criminal ways and alcohol addiction. This ground reality makes the Jagrukta programme an imperative for us. The street plays address all these social evils and motivate youth into education, especially girl child.

It is not at all self-sustainable, as lots of monetary resources are required in terms of honorariums and travel. The Jagrukta programme had received a fillip by support from Coca Cola India, who supported Jagrukta at 50 of the 60 villages, over a period of 6 months, through a contribution of Rs. 2.5 lacs. Currently, the programme is on a low key due to lack of sponsorships. We do not have a corpus fund for it.

At times Jagrukta programme serves as a runway for providing take-off to a new center. For example our next target is a red light area at the border between Delhi and Gaurgaon, where start would be through the Jagrukta programme. This would be followed by setting up a Pathshala, a Karigari center with tailoring or computer education. We await a sponsor to help us enable this

What is your concept of Joyful Learning ?
What is the syllabus of this learning and the profile of your teachers ?
Do you use IT as a tool to further it ?

Our concept of joyful learning is about breaking the routine. This involves organising activities with lots of creativity to them. Therefore, we organise teacher training workshop to promote the concept. Hence there are things like vedic maths and read model of Pratham. But we do not get addicted to any one particular model. The teachers attending are qualified teachers from urban areas, but the next workshop we are planning for to make teachers in the rural areas.

The syllabus we follow is as prescribed by CBSE. As mentioned by me earlier, Read model we have found highly comprehensive for children and it is also interesting to them. The students go through this model and then graduate to SCERT books. Then we have the concept of Theatre in Education with support from National School of Drama. This is mandatory for all kids. They undergo one workshop every month for 4-5 days. Then there are interesting programmes like Know Your Community/Area/Education/Ambition. The children are also posed situational questions like- 'What if you become CM of your state?'

The involvement of IT would be quiet evident from this anecdote. We start computer education for our children from class IV onwards. We also have study material subjects on CD. One of the teachers was trying to use the CD to explain things to the children. The teacher got stuck due to limited knowledge of computers. Sure enough there were many children to help the teacher out. We have also initiated e-literacy programmes for evening batch of students for older boys who have not been initiated into education. They are taught about the alphabet (akshar gyan) through the use of computer. This model is currently at one centre, if successful it would be replicated all across.

You have been around for 8 years.
Why has number of beneficiaries not shown a proportionate increase ?

One of the founding threads of Literacy India was quality. Therefore, we have always desisted from chasing numbers. The 228 children that are with us in the morning programme stay with us till class V, their mainstreaming only happens after that. If we would have been chasing number growth, the mainstreaming would have happened at the onset. The unavailability of quality education at the formal schools in the neighbourhood was always the biggest impediment. Again the number of children in the Gurukul programme depends on the number of children for whom we are able to find sponsors. There are 100 children in the evening classes, a number bound to increase. Our theatre in education programme has benefited more than 1700 children; the sensitization that they receive here is unmatched. This is the programme, nature of which makes it's out-reach to larger numbers. Hence the numbers need to be studied in the qualitative context, as impact is not only about number but also how you go about it.

How successful is the Karigari programme ?
Is it supported by an industry in terms of out placement ?

The Karigari programme is the most sought after amongst kids, as it has direct implication to their employability. We have taken due care to keep our livelihood promotion programmes contemporary. For example out IT education programme does not begin with DOS and straight goes towards windows based curriculum. This year is the second year for IT education programme and 160 children benefited from it. The numbers would have been more but for the paucity of infrastructure and erratic power supply. The other vocational training programme which is very popular amongst adolescent girls is tailoring and embroidery. The older boys are trained in refrigeration and house-keeping with hospitality industry in mind. Marriot hotel would be taking in tow children this month. In house keeping few MNCs and 3 star hotels have employed our elder kids. We are developing case studies of success stories, which would motivate the other children too, especially girls.

A big focus of these programmes is girls. We are planning on driving classes for girls using the services of training centre run by Maruti Udyog. The efforts are also being made to get them employment. Our girls are also getting trained at first aid and mid-wife skills at Sir Ganga Ram Hospital, with support from Youth Reach.

What are your views on NGO credibility and governance ?

The NGOs have to become transparent and methodical with their processes. The audits need to be conducted by certified people to check mismanagement. There should be also processes in place to monitor the programme. The vital aspect is communication to all stake holders including the beneficiaries. Having a set of committed external volunteers can also help NGOs in boosting credibility. If NGOs are also able to involve the donors in the programme, they would have all them talking about the good work that is happening on the ground.

I feel IT IS high Time to break this cycle .NGOs need to create processes to govern themselves more effectively & efficiently .The caveat here is to not create red tapes. I think the local community & the children should be made part of the governance structure. The NGOs cannot today compromise on governing the programme & financial departments .My offer would be to strengthen these two if you are a small NGO like us.

How does Literacy India increase the impact by networking and Advocacy ?

We firmly believe that the linkages have to be established with other NGOs who are in the same boat & the ones who have already up-scaled. In this spirit we have learnt a lot from Mobile Crèches. With support from Youth Reach our girls are getting training in first aid and mid-wife skills. Our adoption of the Pratham read model speaks majorly about our relationship with them. Sankalp an NGO that works in our neighborhood has a symbiotic relationship with us. There are often families that shift from our work area to there or vice versa. We accept children from each others school and facilitate the continuity of the education process. We are suitably supported through Charities Aid Foundation India's Give As You Earn Programme. Beyond Business initiative of National HRD Network has also helped us with corporate linkages.

Our advocacy is at the grass root level with local self-government. Therefore, we liaison a lot with sarpanches, especially the ladies in the Panchayats. Often, this has resulted in getting rent free locations for our centers. There have been interactions at the municipal and MLA level to drive cleanliness campaigns.

How do you raise your resources ?

It has been largely a volunteer and trustee phenomenon. We have largely raised resources through cards, events and donations by individuals known to us. At the corporate level we have received support from Electrolux, Coca Cola, Flour Daniel, Sahara, Parsec Technologies and Mobar. Team computers maintain our computers free of cost.