Shiksharth

Over 25,000 people (civilians, security personnel and extremists) have died in the Left Wing Extremism violence (commonly known as ‘naxal violence’) since 1980 with at least one life every single day over a 38-year period, beginning 1980 and the majority of those killed were civilians.

Violence because of naxalism affects 25% of India.

Sukma southernmost Adivasi (tribal) district of Chhattisgarh infamous of the frequent encounters between naxal forces and security forces, is one of the most backward region of the country witnessing some of the worst tragedies of modern day India in terms of human rights violation, conflict linked deaths , displacing villagers. In Sukma alone because of the conflict:

1. schools at 36 locations were destroyed

2. basic education services got affected for 50000+ children

3. Over 300 school are completely/partially inaccessible for the 50000 children in Sukma alone

While delivery of services are delayed and inaccessible, destruction of property happens, human rights violations are often heard of, it is the children who have been the most vulnerable forcing problems that might exist for generations to come.

Bhumi, through Project Shiksharth, will be supporting and addressing the problem of access to quality education and improving the education status for naxal affected tribal children who are either enrolled in government schools but lack quality education or children who are out of school because of the naxal conflict.

Project Shiksharth is undertaken with the 3 approaches:

a) Creating safe spaces for children

b) Develop contextual education solutions

c) Collaborate with government

In alignment with the above approach, Project Shiksharth has undertaken the following interventions since 2015 while working in Sukma on ground with the children, communities and government:

a) Gyanodaya – A project designed to bring back out of school children and take them through a bridge course learning program for 1 year and get them enrolled in a nearby safe school. This year we will be working with over 5000 children by re-opening schools that have been closed for over a decade because of the conflict

b) Multi-lingual education and contextual pedagogy – Action research-based work to improve quality of education by developing contextual teaching learning resources in schools

c) Technical support to local government – Working in designing and implementing various quality interventions for local administration.

While in regions like Sukma, concrete impact can only be seen after 8-10 years of intervention yet we have had our moments of achievement since 2015. A glimpse of the impact:

1. Over 1000+ out of school children back to schools because of Project Gyanodaya in collaboration with local administration.

2. Directly served 3000+ children and achieved 1.5 times growth in learning level of the children in our classrooms through our work on Multi-Lingual Education and Contextual Pedagogy.

3. 15+ localized science modules developed using low cost resource and 150+ workshops done over 300 hours impacting approx. 2000 children as part of the Science Education Program with 70% knowledge retention rate.

4. 6th standard tribal students Roshan Sodi being awarded by Honourable President of India for his idea in handling EVM machines during elections as part of IGNITE competition and 6 students selected at national level for final round

5. Impacting over 30000+ children by designing, contributing and collaborating with government for education city and education hubs, Chhattisgarhs’ first science theme park, designing Ullas summer camp ( residential and non residential ), Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam IGNITE Awards