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RGCT’s intervention in this area is
Rajiv Gandhi Saksharta Pariyojana which covers
over 150,000 children under the largest
non-government literacy programme currently run
in any district of India.
Rajiv Gandhi Saksharta Pariyojana
The programme’s vision is to endow children with
learning opportunities towards a better life
emphasised by a comprehensive rural literacy programme.
Its goal is to achieve 100 percent child literacy in
five years in Amethi and to complement and strengthen
allied education and development endeavours. The
programme defines a child as being in the age
group of seven to 14
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children who are unlettered in Hindi, that is
they cannot read or write. |
The strength of the programme is the over 7,500 volunteers who have contributed two hours every day to teach Hindi in a trained way over the last four years. Since its inception in 2004, the programme has held over 8,800 classes, and covered 2,30,000 children, 1,40,000 of whom are now reading literate. If children do not pass tests held at the end of the course, they can reenrol for the next session. A recent survey has shown that 82 percent of children reached by Rajiv Gandhi Saksharta Pariyojana either join schools for the first time or, if they were drop-outs, go back to schools. These include dalits and girls.
A recent initiative of the programme has been to focus on developing abilities of reading, writing and speaking English in village schools through a partnership with the Education and Technology Services wing of Infrastructure Leasing & Financial Services Limited (IL&FS), a leading infrastructure development and finance company. The aim of the initiative is to teach English as a language through fun learning methods rather than as a subject. Thirty-two schools in 11 blocks of Amethi as well as two SHGs of RGMVP have joined this English relay programme so that children
can acquire basic English language skills and prepare to take advantage of opportunities as they come their way. |
