“Though (the series of workshop activities and sessions) really squeezed our energies, as we leave we are enriched and return with the hopes of doing more and more for our vulnerable children.”
“Learning through doing is the best practise for learning. I am very much delighted to go through this process you have used as a methodology at this workshop.”
“The
workshop would have been more effective if there had been less number
of
participants.”
“To be very candid, it is unique. Thanks to REACH India”
(A sampling of participant feedback following the Kolkata workshops.)
We received grant applications from 41 NGOs -- 32 proposals were for Direct Service Delivery grants and 14 were for Capacity Building Support grants. The Grant Selection Committee recommended six of these proposals for funding -- three for Direct Service Delivery grants and three for Capacity Building Support grants. After further review, funding for one NGO has been deferred at their request.
Profiles of REACH India's Kolkata NGO Grantees
- CINI Asha
[Capacity Building grantee]
Summary: The project proposes to reach out to 30,000 vulnerable children in and out-of-school. These children would be mainstreamed and/or retained in formal schools by replicating best practices and innovative need-based strategies. The project will primarily be implemented by 10 sub-grantee NGOs whose capacities will be enhanced in organizational and programmatic areas through continuous mentoring, training, monitoring and technical support. The project will focus on primary and upper primary age groups. It will conduct a one-year pilot program with 1000 upper primary age-group children for translating lessons from the ground to the sub-grantees.
The project will be implemented in the Kolkata Municipal Corporation area and will focus on the most deprived wards and pockets of the city including streets, slums/squatter colonies and red light areas.
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- City Level Programme Of Action for Street and Working
Children (CLPOA)
[Capacity Building grantee]
Summary: The project will raise capacities of 5 sub-grantee organizations and in turn a) will run 100 coaching centers to prepare 2500 out-of-school children for putting them in formal schools and b) will extend mainstreaming support to 1000 already mainstreamed children in the form of remedial coaching and tutorial materials such as workbooks etc. so that they remain in formal schools. The project will raise capacities of NGO personnel in the areas of project management, financial management, monitoring & evaluation, survey & data compilation and academic training of coaching teachers.
More - Institute for Psychological and Educational Research ( IPER)
[Direct Service grantee]
Summary: The program proposed for REACH India focuses on ensuring quality management of primary schools in project areas (i.e. 40 schools), running 20 community-based learning centers including eight community resource centers to improve access to all vulnerable children in the project area (1800 students, of which 60 percent are girls, will be direct beneficiaries).The project will also adopt six Government primary schools to demonstrate classroom-based interventions for bringing systematic reforms to the primary education system. The children in these schools will benefit from teacher trainings and classroom-based interventions.
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- Manovikas Kendra - Rehabilitation & Research Institute for
the Handicapped
[Direct Service grantee]
Summary: The project proposed for REACH India will focus on 900 children (in 2 batches) aged between 10 and 14 years from 20 schools and help retain them in formal and alternative systems of education in the greater Kolkata area. The project activities consist of preparation of awareness materials, awareness generation, short workshops and teacher training programs as core activities; to educate, retain and/or enroll ‘at risk’ children with specific learning disabilities in regular/alternative systems of education, through NIOS, pre–vocational /technical training and learning programs. Besides the 900 direct beneficiaries, there will be residual impact on the other children in the 20 schools where the intervention will be made.
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- Vikramshila
Education Resource Society
[Capacity Building grantee]
Summary: This project will extend its quality interventions to selected middle schools to ensure completion. An alternate forward linkage from primary education i.e., the Rabindra Mukta Vidyalaya (Open School), will also be explored in this project.
As a result of the continuous process of capacity building, the NGO-run centers will not only enroll, retain and prepare children for admission to public schools, but will also act as resource centers and model schools that exemplify ‘best practices’. In addition Vikramshila will select ten government schools, where the selected five NGOs will provide school-based quality interventions with support from Vikramshila. For their quality intervention they have selected three domains of focus. The three domains are: a) participatory teaching-learning methods (to guarantee learning achievement); b) introduction of education technology (to bridge the digital divide) and c) Life Skills education – a holistic add-on curricular component (to bridge the gap between learning and livelihood issues). A total number of 11,400 children will benefit directly from the program. The geographical area of intervention will be finalized after the selection of the sub-grantees is completed.
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