Help Poor Tribal Children In India Overcome the Covid Disadvantage Through Quality Education

Tribal regions of Odisha are some of the most underdeveloped areas. Here poverty and illiteracy go hand in hand and exploitation is rampant. People do not get due wages, middlemen cheat them when they seek to withdraw money, they cannot read MRPs or expiry dates, and undersell their produce as they don’t understand weights and measures. Three-quarters of the population is below the official poverty line, 97% of infants get inadequate nutrition, and 44% of children are underweight. Female literacy is 40%, total literacy is 57%. Agragamee surveys indicate that two-thirds of the children in classes VII and VIII cannot read. There are more than 2 million illiterate people in just the 4 tribal districts of Koraput, Malkangiri, Nabrangpur, and Rayagada.

The pandemic has worsened the situation. All over the country, school learning has been seriously affected. In the tribal regions, the lack of internet access, the inability to afford smartphones, the lack of proper study-at-home spaces, have cut students off almost completely from their lessons. More than half the children in the tribal regions are likely to drop out if academic supports are not provided and continued for at least a year after the schools are opened. 

The Need: The most crucial need under the current situation, therefore, is for village learning centres that would provide academic support to children to catch up with their school education. 

Agragamee will work towards the objective of building up a Generation of literates empowered to lead their community out of poverty and exploitation. Towards this end, the following efforts will be taken up:

• Agragamee will establish 30 village learning centres by training village youth as Edu-leaders to provide quality education in their own village. 
• The Edu-leaders will be supported through training, and adequate teaching learning material to take up the challenge of addressing the educational gap for children in the school going age-group. 
• Edu-leaders will also provide leadership to facilitate entitlements to the vulnerable sections, and better participation in local governance.
• There will be community mobilisation for maximum participation in and support to the village learning centres,
• Learning centres will also be developed as resource centres to provide information and knowledge on various relevant subject matters to the village community
• There will be support for village libraries which will provide material of interest for different age groups, and encourage the reading habit amongst all. 
• Agragamee will also link up with the Government, and provide demonstration and training to teachers and other functionaries so that the methods and approach can be taken up by the Government as well for replication. 

Overall Impact:

A generation of literate and aware youth will be built up, empowered to lead their community out of poverty and exploitation

• 1500 students and youth in 30 villages will be empowered through quality education in 25 villages,
• School education and learning outcomes will improve and enable 1500 young people to look forward to a better future
• There will be overall development through better local governance, and problems of vulnerable sections will be addressed in 30 villages, 
• In additional 50 villages, teaching in Government schools will improve, and there will be quality education
• In the long run, replication of the model through appropriate training and Teaching Material will help to reach quality education in all tribal regions in Odisha and help bridge the learning gap in underdeveloped tribal districts in other states.