We want to start 1000 schools at 1000 locations with 1000 students each

Prabhakar Deshpande caught up with
Dinakara Rao, director, Alpha Foundation (www.alphacharities.org) to understand his passion to take high quality education to the poor people in slums.

What is Alpha Foundation into?

We are a registered charity working for upliftment of underprivileged children. We provide administrative and financial support to IRS – ICFAI Republic School. We run 6 regular schools – 4 in Hyderabad and 1 in Bangalore and 1 in Kolkatta. We have around 2800 students in our regular schools. Indeed in our Fatehnagar school we have around 1150 students. We provide holistic, English medium education with considerable extracurricular activities such as martial arts, Veena training and so on. We provide milk and biscuits in morning, lunch in afternoon and milk and biscuits in evening. We charge nominal amount – Rs. 10 for primary and Rs. 25 for secondary students.

Apart from this we have non formal education. The reason is that setting up a full fledged ICFAI Republic School is expensive proposition – for instance our Fatehnagar School in Hyderabad is housed in 40,000 square feet. Hence we have Alpha Centres for Learning (ACL). These are cost efficient. We try to find 2-3 rooms in schools and get 2 teachers to teach children at level 1, level 2 and level three and then try and integrate them into either ICFAI Republic School or nearby school.

There are 50 ACLs – 37 in Hyderabad, and several in Ahmedabad, Mumbai, Kolkatta, Chennai, Bangalore, Aizwal and so on. ACLs have 4 modules – 1 in Non Formal Education, Vocational Training Program, Adult Literacy Program and Senior Citizens Program. In Vocational Training we teach girls micro enterprise related vocational skills. Similarly there are programs for Senior Citizens and so on. We do not charge any fee in ACLs. Indeed we have around 2500 students in such ACLs.

Is it worthwhile for NGOs to lobby with government after creating good model?

We have signed a Public Private Partnership MOU with AP government. We assist in running two schools with around 400 children. We have also signed Private Private Partnerships with several NGOs and help run 13 such schools in Hyderabad. We have almost 4700 students in such schools which we run in Private Private Partnerships.

How do you get your funds?

ICFAI provides 98% of our funds. Since we run quality education program running a school such as ourselves is expensive proposition. It costs almost Rs. 1.2 crores annually for our Fatehnagar school. It cost Rs. 10,000 for child for one year’s education. This involves apart from education, food and other expenses.

It is funds from ICFAI that almost entirely funds IRS apart from ACLs. It is ICFAI funds that are used for health camps. We have treated 2700 patients in our eye camps, 4800 general patients, 750 in dental camps , distributed 1500 spectacles and so on. We have carried out 250 cataract operations and treated 8 cancer patients. We have system of Alpha Health Worker who supervises 8 people who identify health problems in slums and help them to nearby hospitals.

We also run Clinico Legal Aid Program that we run in cooperation with State Legal Centre and National Legal Service Authority. This provides Alternate Dispute Settlement, if both parties agree. We also run old age homes.

What is point of NGOs when government runs massive educational programs? Can NGOs develop models and implement in government?

There is no denying that government machinery is huge. But as Rajiv Gandhi explained, out of 1 rupee only 15 paise reaches beneficiary in government programs. Often the quality of education is not good. Indeed at time – the meal provided through Mid Day Meal Scheme is of bad quality. Our meals are of good quality.

Government efforts are Herculean – Our efforts are miniscule and can only supplement. But we have quality models. However when we tried to incorporate our quality English medium education in government schools we found opposition from Telugu medium teachers who feared unemployment.

Is it possible to give loans to parents to send to quality schools?

It is possible to give loans when there is guarantee of repaying. After all loans can be given to MBA/ BE/MBBS students because there is a degree of job guarantee. But there is no job guarantee in other educational programs.

But it is our dream to get slum children go through KG to PG programs and we would like some of our slum children get MBA and compete with regular middle class children.

But coming back to your loan question. We have sister organisation – Maxwell Trust that is a micro finance organisation started three years ago that provides loans to people in slums.

But surely since you have good model it is worthwhile replicating it in large way?

Right now we have merely 6 schools. But we plan to set up 10-15 schools in 2-3 years time frame and then we can lobby with government in AP and in India.

NGOs have some areas of problem – credibility, delivery mechanisms and funds. For us ICFAI provides funds. We have started ACLs with small resources. Just some rooms and so on. We want to convert ACLs into IRS – ICFAI Republic Schools.

We would like to lobby with NGOs. Talk to NGOs. And then lobby with government. However our earlier effort was not that successful. Teachers opposed English medium education because they could loose jobs.

There is dichotomy here. We want our children to become MBAs. But slum children may end up Auto Mechanics and Rickshaw pullers and so on.

We have spread by word of mouth. We want to create a proven model at national level and regional level before getting into lobbying.

How did the idea for Alpha Foundation come about? What is future course of direction?

ICFAI as you must be aware runs 19 Business Schools and 180 National Colleges. ICFAI runs distance education programs and so on. So it was a thought at ICFAI that since we are doing so much for higher education, we must also do something for poor people and thus started the idea.

In future I would like to start 1000 schools at 1000 locations with 1000 students each. But this could take 10-15 years.