Agastya International Foundation

Chittoor District, India

Sparking a Love for Learning

In rural Andhra Pradesh, India, a traveling truckload of science experiments is proving what educators have known for centuries: children learn best by doing.

Students and teachers in the Chittoor district, one of the region’s poorest, face formidable obstacles. Per capita income is about $150 a year. Child labor is common and dropout rates are high. Illiteracy hovers around 85 percent. Government schools are overcrowded, and teachers are often poorly trained
and unmotivated.

But when the mobile science lab rolls up to a village school, the children’s excitement is palpable. The lab carries over a hundred simple, low-cost experiments—most portable enough to be set up under a tree — and a teacher who will involve the students directly in discovery. They’ll step forward to help, and they’ll be urged to ask questions. They’ll see and experience scientific concepts in action. And whether the lesson shows what makes rockets fl y, or how sound travels, or what makes a sunset colorful, they will remember and use what they learn.

Launched by Agastya International Foundation in 2002, the mobile labs are at the heart of a unique effort to transform primary education in rural India by making it creative, practical, and responsive to social needs. The Global Fund for Children began supporting one of the labs in 2004, underwriting salaries for teachers and a driver and covering equipment and operating costs.

With their hands-on, participatory approach, the labs spark curiosity that helps students master basic concepts in astronomy, physics, chemistry, and biology. A single lab reaches thirty thousand students in a year, and each lab returns several times to the same school to instill sustained interest in learning.

The mobile labs also carry science fairs to schools throughout the countryside, enlisting fourteen to sixteen-year-old student instructors to teach experiments to thousands of younger children. Agastya reinforces these efforts with teacher training that helps educators shift from the traditional emphasis on rote learning to more interactive pedagogical approaches.

So far, results are encouraging. In just three years, public examination pass rates have shot up among high schoolers in Kuppam, where Agastya is most active. More kids are staying in school, and according to a local school principal, “Agastya is helping the children to come out of their shells and release their latent talent and knowledge. The train of learning has started to move.”

 

Train Platform Schools

Bhubaneswar, India

Amid the din of passing trains and the clamor of bustling crowds, a group of children sit on a train platform in Bhubaneswar, India. Like many of the twenty million children in India who live on the streets, these children often find shelter and work in the train station. They work as porters and rickshaw pullers. Or they earn pennies sweeping, selling newspapers, running errands, or shining shoes. These forty children, though, are among the fortunate few of India's street children because they also attend a Train Platform School, one of fourteen in the Indian state of Orissa.

Without family, education or a means of support, attending school is not an option for the vast majority of India's street children. Fifteen years ago, Inderjit Khurana, an educator and the principal of a private English high school, created the Train Platform School concept as a way of bringing the classroom to those children least likely to attend school. Today, more than four hundred children, ranging in age from six to fourteen, receive instruction in reading, writing, arithmetic, geography, history, and basic life skills. Dedicated teachers use song, drama, puppetry, dance, and the surrounding environment to engage the children in their lessons.

In 1997, using proceeds from its first book, the Global Fund for Children launched its grant-making program with a $1,200 award to the Train Platform Schools. Since then, the Global Fund for Children has expanded its funding of the Train Platform Schools, largely through a remarkable partnership with the Mirman School in Los Angeles, California. Through our outreach program, fourth-grade teacher Candace Corliss learned of the Train Platform Schools. In 1999, Candace's students held a readathon and raised more than $3,600 for the Train Platform Schools. The following year, along with fellow teacher Jocelyn Balaban and her class, Mirman School students raised an incredible $12,000. Their creative approach to helping other children around the world forms the basis of the Global Fund for Children's grant-making program. Through their efforts, the Mirman School students have helped the Train Platform Schools meet their immediate operating needs and build an endowment for the program's future

Select Country Profiles:

Agastya International Foundation, India
Children’s Town, Zambia
Foundation For Development of Needy Communities, Uganda
Girls Education and Mentoring Services, United States
La Conscience, Togo
Sports and Life Schools (Escuelas Deporte y Vida), Peru
Train Platform Schools, India
Women Development Association, Cambodia