Playground

        

As a result of a generous donation from Pushpa and Kamal Kabra, the Adharshila School now has a new playground for the younger children in the Primary School. 

The playground has a slide, see saws, swings and a climbing frame. All the new jhoolas were an instant hit among the kids. It is common to see the children coming to school a little before morning assembly time, to be able to have a go on the swings, and then leave a little later in the afternoon after having another go !

Thank you, Mrs. and Prof. Kabra, for your wonderful gift to the children! 

Asmita.

New resource material for the school

In November 2008, Atul Kumar of Indian Products, USA (who is a long time friend and supporter of Adharshila) sent across a donation that helped us to buy a whole lot of resource material for the school. 

Using this donation, we bought geometry boxes, pens, pencils, colours (sketch pens, crayons), colouring books and notebooks for the school. The following is a link to the picassa web album created by Meraj (Adharshila's President and guiding force) which has some lovely photographs of children using the new resource material that Atul's generous donation made possible. 

http://picasaweb.google.co.in/merajuddinsyed/AtulSResources?authkey=wWracjbkLu4&feat=email#

Thank you, Atul...! Those smiles and the rapt concentration on the kids' faces will surely make your day too.  

Asmita.

Adharshila Website

The Adharshila School's website is now up (although parts of it are still under construction). Please visit www.adharshila.org.in and leave your comments, ideas, suggestions etc. on the blog. 

Best,

Asmita.

Cultural Festival at Adharshila

 

The students of the Adharshila School put up their first ever Cultural Festival on Oct.2nd 2008. It was an exhilirating experience for the 5 outstation friends of Adharshila who attended the function. These were Abha Joshi, Shweta Rao, and Asmita Kabra (from the Adharshila Governing Board), Videh Upadhyay (Trustee, Samrakshan), and Chandrima Sinha, long time friend of Adharshila from Delhi. 

The evening began with a rendition of the National Anthem by the students, and was followed by a 3 hour long sequence of songs, dances and drama presentations by the young students. The local Station House Officer of the Agraa Police Station, Mr. Manoj Jha, was the Chief Guest, and the function was attended by people from almost all the neighbouring villages. 

Given that this was their very first appearance on stage in front of a nearly 1000 strong audience, the students performed with amazing flair and confidence. The singing was superb, the dancing graceful, and the actors in the plays were wonderfully well prepared. All this is especially remarkable for a school that runs on a skeletal budget, in one of the poorest regions of India, with teachers who are first generation schoolgoers themselves, and students from families with daily incomes of less than Rs.10..... 

Kudos to Adharshila, and to the entire teaching and support staff of the School, who have worked tirelessly for over a month to make the Cultural Evening a huge success! 

The Area and People

Adivasis or indigenous people constitute nearly one-fourth of the total population of Madhya Pradesh, and a much greater fraction of the poor, vulnerable and marginalized people in this state. On almost all indicators of human development, their performance is far below that of other population groups in the state. According to the MP Human Development Report (2003), nearly 74 per cent of Adivasi children in Madhya Pradesh are malnourished.

In the Chambal Division of north-west Madhya Pradesh, the main Adivasi community are the Sahariya, a Scheduled Tribe counted among one of the 75 so-called ‘primitive’ tribal groups by the Government of India. Sahariya villages are concentrated in the upland, forested and hilly parts of the Chambal region, which in turn are surrounded by large masses of non-tribal populations. Historically, the Sahariya have depended almost completely upon forests for survival and income. In addition to the Sahariya, the other main caste groups of the region include Harijan, Brahmin, Gujjar, Kushwah and Yadav, and a few families of the nomadic Mogia community.

Agriculture and other livelihood among the tribals is significantly less prosperous than the agriculture and non-farm economy of the non-Adivasi people. The Sahariya constitute an island of poverty, vulnerability, socio-economic distress and political disempowerment, concentrated in the neglected, rainfed pockets of an otherwise agriculturally well-developed region.

Adharshila’s target area and community is a pocket of 24 villages in the Vijaypur sub-division of Chambal’s Sheopur district, with over 90 per cent population consisting of the Sahariya. These villages were displaced in 1999-2000 from the nearby Kuno Wildlife Sanctuary, to make way for an ambitious wildlife conservation project for preserving the endangered Asiatic Lion. After displacement, the economy of these villages suffered severely, since the compensation package provided by the government was highly inadequate to restore their lost livelihoods. Today, the average per capita income among these displaced families is less than Rs.10 per day, and disease, illiteracy, humger and distress migration are daily facts of life for them.

It is in these challending circumstances that the Adharshila School has been working towards poverty alleviation and sustainable socio-economic development through its education initiative. Alongside, in partnership with the NGO Samrakshan Trust, Adharshila also works for agricultural income improvement and promotion of non-farm enterprises in the same villages.

Volunteer with Adharshila

Join hands with Adharshila to make a difference to the world. Contact us to volunteer, contribute to, or otherwise associate with a hands-on, life-changing experience of working in a remote rural area of India.

You will find a stint with Adharshila a highly enriching experience if your areas of interest include any of the following:

-Meaningful education of underprivileged rural children
-Equitable and sustainable conservation of biodiversity
-Sustainable natural resource management
-Sustainable agriculture for semi-arid tropics
-Sustainable farm and non-farm livelihood avenues
-Sustainably using forest produce for medicinal, commercial and other purpose
-Adivasi (indigenous) culture and way of life
-Preserving indigenous health traditions and knowledge
-Empowerment of the poor, especially women

Adharshila invites researchers, academics, volunteers, donors, and other interested people to contact us and visit our field office in village Agraa, to explore ways of associating themselves more actively with their areas of interest.

We also invite educational institutions to contact us for devising meaningful exposure visits for students, to get a real ‘feel’ of rural India.

Achievements, Infrastructure and Initiatives

Students Achievements
-Implementation of classes up to Standard 8, where the MP State curriculum is taught to children in the 5-14 age group
-Excellent performance by the Adharshila students each year in the Class 5 and Class 8 board examinations held by the State
-Excellent performance by a majority of students in the house examinations held for all other classes














Infrastructure
-Purchase of 0.48 hectares of land for the Adharshila Campus in village Agraa
-Establishment of a composite school campus with three small building units, each with 3 rooms -Establishment of a playground, stage, mini-clinic and livelihood training spaces on the Adharshila campus
-Increased outreach (every year, nearly 150 children from 15 to 20 villages surrounding Agraa attend the Adharshila School)

Administration
-Government recognition up to the Middle School level. As a result, the Adharshila School at Agraa now runs classes up to Standard 8, as against the Primary School that was originally proposed.
-Creation of a cadre of 8 dedicated, well-trained teachers drawn from the local community. These teachers have continuously upgraded their own skills and qualifications, and have been exposed to a range of teaching initiatives across the region for broadening their vision of education.
-Establishment and stabilization of the Adharshila Shiksha Samiti to oversee the functioning of the school. The Samiti has a 7-member Governing Board consisting of experts from varied fields, who are committed to providing long-term support to the School.













Initiatives
-Regular health check-ups, treatment and monitoring of students through the on-campus Arogya clinic
-Development of an innovative and locally relevant Environment Education curriculum, with detailed teaching modules and indoor and outdoor activities for children of all ages
-Organizing the Annual Bal Mela (Children’s Festival) with new themes, events and initiatives every year

Vision and Mission

Adharshila aims to grow into a full-fledged Secondary School that will provide quality education to children of extremely poor and economically vulnerable households in the remote and backward Chambal region of India. Adharshila will develop into a learning hub for this region, by expanding the outreach of its innovative livelihood skill development work not just to its own students, but also to students of government run primary schools in the area.

Its innovative environment education modules will instill conservation awareness among the children, so that they are able to face the challenges of sustainable development and climate change more effectively as adults. Adharshila will be a space where young students get opportunities to move beyond purely syllabus-based learning. It will be a place where they can play, create, experiment, innovate and enjoy, while also learning from books and classroom lessons. It will offer them opportunities to learn using all of their senses and a variety of media. It will expose them to proven techniques of sustainable agriculture and a variety of non-farm livelihood skills, so that adopting these ideas and practices comes naturally to them when they grow up. At Adharshila, the students will be close to trees and open spaces, so that their natural compassion and affinity for nature and animals gets a keener edge.

Through a sustained focus on high quality, joyful, holistic and meaningful education, Adharshila will create within a decade a critical mass of dedicated young individuals who will spearhead rapid social, economic and political transformation of this region. Most importantly, Adharshila will be an oasis among this region of scarcity, where each child finds joy in learning, and which she can look back upon with fondness when she grows up, so that she always has an incentive to contribute to her homeland, from wherever her life takes her.

The Adharshila School

The Adharshila school was established on August 15, 2005 at village Agraa in the Vijaypur tehsil of district Sheopur, Madhya Pradesh. It’s aim is to put into action an innovative, locally relevant approach to primary education for first generation school-going children in the remote and economically vulnerable Adivasi villages of Chambal region.

Since then, the Adharshila school has grown rapidly, far beyond original projections and expectations. It has made notable advances in providing meaningful and joyful education to children from extremely poor and vulnerable households. In this red, white and green coloured campus, nearly 200 boys and girls come daily to spend a day full of fun and learning. The Adharshila school is situated among the green fields between villages Palpur and Agraa, and its serene surroundings create an ideal environment for learning.

The Adharshila School is now an integral part of the social landscape of the region, and its continued existence and growth is central to the long-term sustainable development of this poor and yet natural resource abundant region next to the Kuno Wildlife Sanctuary.