Education

Systemic developments ensue from the foundations of reimagining education as a pillar of the country’s growth. Informing the need for providing quality education for all, media serves as the vessel of public education on a variety of domains in formats that are accessible and engaging. Furthermore, advocating for better access, infrastructure and institutions of education become a mandate for the media.

• Neenv
• RTE

Neenv

Where it all began?

Patrika started the Neenv drive to target 70,000 government schools in Rajasthan where more than 60 lakh children study. These are labelled as ‘schools of the poor’. Despite government declared spending of Rupees 22 thousand per child annually, poor monitoring and poor governance have ruined these schools. They are in dire need of attention and strong intervention to achieve better learning levels and an inspiring environment. The campaign involves outreach to every Panchayat Block in Rajasthan and mapping of all schools that can be aided with community engagement.

Our target areas

PUBLIC EDUCATION

PUBLIC SCHOOL INFRASTRUCTURE

COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT

How the campaign took shape:

• Volunteer Training and Orientation: 4 batches of volunteers received two days of rigorous training in empowerment & engagement to equip them to work on the ground
• Citizen Audit:
  • Aankho Dekhi - Physical Mapping
  • Kanon Suni - Dialogue with Teachers, Parents and Children
• Citizen Journalism : A. Story Writing B. Report and Experience Sharing C. Social Media Trending
• Mobilizing communities: Young volunteers from different parts of India were enthused and organized as volunteers.
• Letter to Collector Sir/Ma’am - Students writing letters to the Collector; sharing their problems, demanding improvement and asking them to visit their schools.
• Prayer for Teachers – In all Rural Blocs, (295) prayer and signature campaigns were undertaken by students without teachers
• Neenv Extra Class - People’ participation to teach in schools
• Sambalan - with NEENV - Independent monitoring by government in 9000 schools to assess learning levels. The government (SSA) invited the NEENV network to perform reportage ensuring fair feedback. Consequently, these schools were visited and the entire exercise reported.

Our Impact Story

Independent evaluation of 9000 schools on the behest of the government

MONTORING AND AUDIT

Unprecedented 9 lac government school enrollment; SMC meetings; Recruitment for teacher vacancies

ENROLLMENTS AND REFORMS

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Testimonials

RTE

Where it all began?

Patrika launched an editorial and on-ground campaign for awareness and action for the implementation of the RTE Act through public engagement. It was a massive campaign to focus on the issue of 25% reservation in private schools for the underprivileged as part of provisions ensuring right to free and compulsory elementary education. The campaign undertook avenues of engagement such as community mobilization, awareness, pressure building, editorial campaigning and expose of non-compliance and malpractices.

Our target areas

PUBLIC EDUCATION

PUBLIC SCHOOL INFRASTRUCTURE

How the campaign took shape?

• Through a team of volunteers, Patrika engaged local NGOs to identify ‘out of school’ children in the vicinity of the private schools (Child Tracking); sought admissions and fought against malpractices for their rights.
• Stories in all respective editions of Patrika invited joint campaigns built on a model of responsibility-sharing with community and volunteers (concept of volunteers built at ward level through the Patrika Connect campaign were used here)
• Rallies on streets were organized to spread awareness and seek rights.
• Public representatives and affluent communities were engaged to generate resources and support for underprivileged children
• Celebrating admissions of the children from weak economic backgrounds; giving recognition to RTE –compliant schools and exposing those that did not implement the act.
• Giving visibility to stories pf changing Lives/ realized dreams of the underprivileged children.
• Exposing policy loopholes, lethargy of the officials, poor implementation of the act, anomalies and related aspects
• Appealing to the masses to offer support and join the campaign with ground-level dialogue meets.
• Filing Right to Information (RTI) applications to dig out hidden realities and expose corrupt practices in the education sector.

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