Challenge: Research shows that quality of education in the foundational years and parental involvement play a significant role in shaping up children’s life. Across India, most of the children from resource-constrained families attend government schools and low-cost private schools. They lack both – parental involvement and quality learning opportunities in schools- creating much wider gap for their chances to realise full potential.
Solution: We have designed an after- school engagement programme to bridge the gap for children from resource-constraint families. The solution integrates Nature-Based Learning for STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) & Arts subjects and engages parents in an activity centric learning environment. We studied various after-school programme globally to understand the best practices and arrived at this solution for the local context- needs of children, families and communities.
Our Approach: The effectiveness of our solution depends on its delivery mechanism. There are three pillars of our approach considering the low availability of resources in schools:
- Learning facilitators and trained volunteer-teachers: A women learning facilitator, selected from the community, anchors the activities in the after-school engagements. A set of volunteer-teachers provide subject-specific support for STEM and ARTs subjects through nature-based learning activities such as nutrition garden, forest walks, nature journaling.
- Library of curated content in the school: A library with curated reading sessions and thematic activities exposes children to books /contents beyond course curriculum opening door to the vast world around them.
- Active parental involvement: Parents are regularly engaged through specially designed parent-child workshops and interaction sessions with parents from different walks of life.
Expected Impact/ Outcome
- Increased motivation to learn STEM & ARTs subjects
- Strengthened metacognitive skills- ability to think critically & explore with curiosity
- Increased resilience through fostering connectedness (with self, parents, and nature)
Program Development and Pilot Testing: The implementation model of the program as well as the several interventions in the after-school engagement have been developed based on our ongoing engagements with government schools in Braj, Uttar Pradesh. Over the last two years, we have been working with a few organisations in Goverdhan, Vrindavan and Mathura for testing of several intervention and after-school activities to support overall learning and personality growth of the students. The results are encouraging- children learn with trust and connect with their Gyan Didi (trained learning facilitators who deployed as part of the program) and parents explicitly demand for more parent-child workshops.