APNA SKOOL ( Jagriti Bal Vikas Samiti )

APNA SKOOL(Jagriti Bal Vikas Samiti)

Background: • Large number of migrant seasonal workers: agricultural sectors and construction activities. • Entire family lives in hutments/temporary sheds at the construction site and brick kilns. • Children of school going age are deprived of normal schooling and just remain at worksites. • Run errands for all and sundry and slowly get prematurely inducted into workforce. • girl child has to take care of the infants while parents are at work and assist the family in household chores. • Workers associate schooling with upper classes feel that schooling is necessary only for those jobs that are in any case not available to them. • Reaching the School to these unreachable is the aim of Jagriti.

Apna SKool: • Started by Jagriti Bal Vikas Samiti, IIT Kanpur in 1994. • Largely cater to migrant worker kids from state of Bihar, Hariyna and Western UP at construction site/bricklin. • 25 schools near bricklins and other construction sites with 25-30 students in grade 1 to 5 and run 7-8 mos. Total 800+ students. • Acts as bridge school so that the migrant kids can continue education away from home. • Students learn Reading, Writing and Arithmetic's just as in regular schools and at the same time participate in many extra curricular mind-broadening activities. • Many extra curricular mind-broadening activities, such as Songs and Dances, Artwork, Dramatics, Story telling and Poetry recitation, Sports and Games etc..

Apna SKool: • Provides nutritious mid day meals to the students attending Apna Skool. • Helps students with school uniform and Shoes, Sweaters during winters and School supplies, such as Text books and Copies. • Provides basic health needs in the form usual immunizations and vitamin supplements. • Program in place to enroll Apna Skool graduates in various mainstream schools and assist to attain higher education in form of scholarships. • 52 children are benefited in 2015-2016. • Helps to generate awareness among parents to appreciate the need to get their children remain in School at least until they reach 15 years, so that they become good citizens. • Provides various vocational training.

Challenges: • Village school does not accept students joining in the mid-year and there are administrative hurdles to be overcome. • RTE might help, legislation for Compulsory Education till 14 years • In village schools children remain totally neglected as no teacher wants to attend them. The children find themselves out of sync with the school either in terms of the level, or in terms of the methods of instruction. School may appear either boring or fearsome. It results into the dropping out of these children from the schools. • Continuity is lost as migrant workers do not necessarily return to the same worksite or same works contractor • having a network of Apna Skools at many locations, past two years with mixed results • supplementary instructor cum monitor to provide personal attention through some one familiar with the strategies for learning developed at Apna Skools

Challenges: • Temptation for the older children to enter the workforce and become wage-earners • Apna Skools try to introduce older children to various vocational options and work with organizations such as Jan Shikshan Sansthan • Not the main objective of the concept of Apna Skool.

JBVS Partners:

Budget Proposal 2017 -18

Roles: • Academic Coordinator is responsible for planning, design and monitoring of the academic program of Apna Skool. • Office coordinator is responsible for correspondence with funding partners, social media management and for coordinating between various projects/centres. • Project Coordinators are responsible for field work, monitoring of centers and overall functioning of centers of a particular region. • Transport coordinator is entrusted with the supervision of the transportation part of all the activities as well as driving the kids from nearby brick-kilns to Apna Skool Tatiyaganj and driving them back to their homes.

Roles:Health worker • Health worker will organize the regular immunization camps at brick kilns • Coordinate with the nearby primary health centers, and will take the needy children or parents to the doctors. • Initially the health worker was appointed for 8 months for the brick kiln season only, now made all year long.

Expenses: • Transportation cost included the cost of fuel and maintenance of ApnaSkool van which commutes the children and also the expenses incurred on additional vehicle employed for commuting kids. • ApnaSkools celebrate their annual day program each year apart from celebrating the Independence Day and Republic Day. These are occasions when the parents get informed about the Schooling and take note of the progress of their children • Every year children of Apnaskools go for a trip to Zoo, museum or similar locations. This is a fun trip with an aim to provide them an opportunity to educate themselves on the large variety of flora and fauna, history and culture of India etc..

Vocational Training & camps: • Tie-and-Die, Fabric Painting, Embroidery, Sewing, Tiles and • Aim: To impart skills in the said areas as a hobby and also which can help kids earn some pocket money • Computer Classes • Aim: To acquaint kids with computer and impart working knowledge of MS Office( Paint and Word) • Sports Camp: Taekwondo • Aim: To impart senior kids (class 5th onwards) especially girls with basic self defense skills • Sports Camp: Football • Aim: To provide senior boys a definite play time where they learn skills. • Music Training (Vocals)

Expenses:Teacher’s Training • We have regular teachers’ training workshop every fortnight at Jagriti office. Beside these workshops, we organize a 3-5 days intensive training program (usually in the beginning of November) especially for the teachers of brick kiln apnaskools by external experts in the field of education, such as Ekalavya, Hoshangabad. Trips to various other organizations engaged in similar activities and for recreation of teachers is also planned for the next year.

Expenses:Miscellaneous/Contingency The miscellaneous/contingency head in the presented proposal incorporates the following. • All the non-regular expenses that were in the previous proposal namely miscellaneous, health and a few new expenses that we expect to incur in the upcoming session, viz. computer software and hardware upgrade, general maintenance and repairs of various assets. • Till this year, we some of the expenses were taken care of completely by only one or two donors. • Next year onwards, we plan to distribute all the expenses proportionately among all our funding partners. It is basically just a reorganization of budget and, correspondingly, the proposals which does not affect the total fund sought much.

Expenses:Nutrition Apna Skool's nutrition program was fully supported by Mala Foundation, Belgium but they may not be able to supports us now due to some problem at their end. We are in NEED OF FUNDS for our nutrition program from other donors if they can.

Apna Skool on Web: • https://www.facebook.com/apnaskool • http://apnaskool-kanpur.blogspot.in/ • http://jagriti.seeyourimpact.org/

APNA SKOOL ( Jagriti Bal Vikas Samiti )