About the Project
RURAL EDUCATION - CHALLENGES
Even after 64 years of political independence, India has remained a developing country. Reasons are many - overpopulation, unemployment, corruption, political system, wrong policies, poverty, etc. But root cause is not giving the right priority to the issue of education. Often awareness to importance of education itself is lacking in rural areas – 69.4% of Indian Population [Indian Census, 2011]
Most of the educated people live in a highly connected world and are from developed urban region. The ‘India’, they perceive is very utopian and is quite different from the ‘Real India’. Educated parents send their children to ICSE / CBSE /English medium schools, monitor children’s progress, mentor them, send them to tuition classes, and provide all facilities for their children so that they excel.
But come to villages. It is a different story altogether. Rains or no rains, 12 to 18 hours of power cut per day is a norm here. Newspapers do not reach many villages. Many villages lack primary health centres. Sanitation facilities are very poor. Majority of the inhabitants are not educated and belong to socially and economically weaker sections of the society. Environment at home is not congenial for studies. Children are disinterested in going to schools;many schools lack infrastructure; rote teaching methods contribute substantially to this factor ;
Lack of facilities and comforts in villages generally repel educated persons from staying in villages, so finding and retaining good teachers in rural schools is yet another challenge.
WHAT ARE WE DOING?
We are running a free residential and non-residential innovative school and rural educational research home for opportunity-deprived children.
Way back in 1992 Divya Deepa initiated its activities in Srirampura Village on the outskirts of Mysore. Divya deepa started conducting free supplementary classes for the benefit of rural school going children and dropouts. The Divya Deepa Charitable trust was registered in 1999. In June 2005, “Kaliyuva Mane” (Kannada word for 'home for learning)– an innovative school was formally started based on our grass root level experience since 1992. Since then we have come a long way, August 2012- we have now expanded our school, with better infrastructure and a support system (huge volunteer support) in place. But we strongly believe that this is just a beginning, and we have a magnanimous task lying ahead of us and we welcome and need all the support – financial, logistics, teachers and volunteers that we can get. To have a glimpse of our work, click on the link below:
http://www.divyadeepatrust.org
IMPACT OF OUR PROJECT :
All children currently in our school are happily evolving.
We started in a hut with 14 children, 4 of whom were residential and now the count is 75 children (32 of whom are residential), and have better infrastructure. More children are knocking the gates.
May 6th 2010, was an important milestone in the history of Divya Deepa. 6 out of the 7 eligible Kaliyuva Mane children cleared SSLC in ENGLISH medium with flying colours. The highlight of their journey was their commitment towards accomadating 10 years of education into their 3-5 years of education in Kaliyuva Mane. Each one of them was a first generation school goer from rural BPL family! “…for these children who had no hope of education and had given up on learning it is a major milestone and holds out hope for the millions like them” – THE HINDU, May 11, 2010
The trend is continuing. During 2012, all the children with different difficult domestic/scholastic/economic/social/emotional problems had appeared for X standard exams in English medium. All of them cleared the exams in flying colours. Two of them passed in First class.
Divyadeepa is completely supporting 6 children's further education.
OUR MISSION :
To transform opportunity deprived children into self-reliant citizens of our country by giving them LOVE, CARE, EMPATHY and QUALITY EDUCATION and to create a model school for such "OUT OF SYSTEM" children through intense grass root level research so that it can be replicated elsewhere.
Project Action Plan
Project Action Plan
1CREATION OF INFRASTRUCTURE ; 1) School bus to bring more ‘OUT OF SYSTEM’ children from neighbouring villages to the present school. 2) Additional residence for volunteers 3) Construction of new dormitory for more children so that the present dormitory can be utilized for starting income-cum-employment generating activities. 4) Construction of innovative class rooms 5) Compound wall for the land 6) Construction of a kid’s court. Kids court is a place where children argue, settle disputes, amend themselves. Total funds needed : Rupees one crore.
CREATION OF INFRASTRUCTURE ;
1) School bus to bring more ‘OUT OF SYSTEM’ children from neighbouring villages to the present school.
2) Additional residence for volunteers
3) Construction of new dormitory for more children so that the present dormitory can be utilized for starting income-cum-employment generating activities.
4) Construction of innovative class rooms
5) Compound wall for the land
6) Construction of a kid’s court. Kids court is a place where children argue, settle disputes, amend themselves.
Total funds needed : Rupees one crore.
Located in:,
2CREATION OF CORPUS FUND : Our operating costs per month has touched almost 1.5 lakhs per month. We are in the process of building a corpus fund so that the school can become operationally sustainable. We need around Rupees one crore more.
CREATION OF CORPUS FUND :
Our operating costs per month has touched almost 1.5 lakhs per month. We are in the process of building a corpus fund so that the school can become operationally sustainable. We need around Rupees one crore more.
Located in:,
3To continue research, documentation and create a model school for ’OUT OF SYSTEM’ children which can be replicated elsewhere 2. To start some eco-friendly, rural based, income-cum-employment generation activities so that the entire project becomes sustainable over a period of time. 3. To start a teachers' training institute to tackle the larger issue of lack of effective teachers in rural areas. 4.To expand the reach of this project
To continue research, documentation and create a model school for ’OUT OF SYSTEM’ children which can be replicated elsewhere
2. To start some eco-friendly, rural based, income-cum-employment generation activities so that the entire project becomes sustainable over a period of time.
3. To start a teachers' training institute to tackle the larger issue of lack of effective teachers in rural areas.
4.To expand the reach of this project
Located in:,
Who will this help Rise
Millions of rural first generation school goers from rural Below Poverty Line families, school dropouts, child labourers, children from broken and disturbed families, School going children who fail to reach the grades, Economically middle class children who find main stream school inadequate
How will this help them Rise?
School bus ( preferably environment friendly)
Project Champion
Project Location
This Project Needs
Volunteers
3 administration and all works connected with the organisation
6 teachers
Equipments
1 School bus ( preferably environment friendly)
Funding
₹20000000
VINOTH KUMAR P
7 months ago
Congratulations for your effort in write path
Soma Murthy
10 months ago
I watched the video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqebJCAus40.
It is a remarkable video by Monika Guglia and excellent narration by Poorvi Sardar. Thank you Monika and Poorvi! I look forward to more productions like this from you. I know there are many other people who made this video possible. Of course, the kids - KM kids - are the centerpiece and they, with their backgrounds, innocence, willingness to learn, make this possible.
The movie is of very good quality and has award-winning type stills. The movie captures the heart warming qualities of Kaliyuva Mane kids, volunteers, and above all the founder and the pillar of KM, Ananth Kumar.
KM is a special school like no other. Ananth's ideas implemented successfully at KM are simple, yet breathtaking. Kids learn at different paces and in different ways. Ananth explains this with an example - a kid who finds difficulty adding two numbers but knows exactly how much change he should receive when he buys a bunch of things at a store and gives a 50 Rupee bill. He is obviously doing a lot of arithmetic, multiplication, addition, and subtraction in his mind with ease, though not in a traditional method. Human brain works in amazing ways!
Young volunteer Azruddhin Azaaf says "these kids have taught me more about life...we whine about a lot, but seeing what these kinds have one through, we get hope..." How true!
Ms. Sharada recognizes that KM kids shed their inhibitions and that some students are thinking ahead of the teacher. She explains with an example, when she was teaching about aerobic and anaerobic respiration (anaerobic type happens in lower organisms), one kid wonders about what happens when you run very fast (since the oxygen supplied to the muscle cells is limited). What an insight! Ms. Sharada recognizes the graduate level musing by the kid.
The reasons for KM's success are the following, not necessarily in any order.
1. Allowing kids to learn at their own pace. When I visited KM two years ago, I watched a bunch of kids being taught by a volunteer. I saw one student who didn't participate but was away at a distance at the fence poking something with a stick. I asked Ananth why he is not among the other students learning from the teacher. Ananth replied that at this time he does not want to learn what is being taught, but he is indeed learning something on his own.
2. Not imposing rigor like in traditional schools giving tons of homework, etc., instead giving them the freedom and flexibility.
3. Unorthodox way of teaching by volunteers (Azruddhin says the teaching is informal and he tries to teach them about Google, gmail, etc.).
4. Rich and non-academic type learning like with kids bank, mock court, etc.
5. KM kids receive a lot of love.
6. KM volunteers, yes, volunteers like Azruddhin and Sharada who give so much.
Soma Murthy
Vinol Joy D'souza
1 year ago
Congratulations for being the second runner up.....Feels good to be a volunteer for this organization and Thank you Spark the Rise for supporting this unique project and helping INDIA Rise...
Yogesh Devaraj
1 year ago
Nice to see my hometown NGO is one of the finalists. I have voted and will ask my friends to vote as well. good luck !!!
Yogesh Devaraj
1 year ago
Nice to see my hometown NGO is one of the finalists. I have voted and will ask my friends to vote as well. good luck !!!