BACKGROUND
Located in the remote hills of eastern Manipur bordering Myanmar, Kamjong district is about 120 km from Imphal. Lack of basic transportation, health and education infrastructure, poverty, unemployment, drugs, ethnic clashes and insurgency are some of the major problems holding the region back. People primarily depend on agriculture and forests for livelihood with no steady source of income for most families.
STATE OF EDUCATION:
Government schools are the primary providers of education with schools established in each village. Although teachers are appointed and salaries are drawn, most of the schools in villages are not functioning except for one government school in district headquarters. The HQ also has a couple of private schools but only a handful of parents can afford them, and the quality is poor. The region is in dire need of a model school that can provide quality education. Particularly abysmal is the state of early childhood education (ages 3 years to 8 years) – there are no teachers, nor schools catering to their needs in villages. The few who can afford the costs, move to nearby towns to enroll their children in schools. Other children join late in school in higher classes and the precious time available for laying the foundation is lost. As a consequence, one can find many delays in learning and students in high school too struggle with basic, primary school level arithmetic and language skills. As a result, most youth are unemployable – neither have they learned crucial life skills while working with parents in farms nor have they gained skills to be employed or start their own ventures.
OUR WORK IN THE REGION:
Orenda Initiatives has been working in the district for the last 3 years, teaching, mentoring, and providing scholarships to students. When the pandemic hit, we started working in Sampui village from March 2021. Even as the pandemic disrupted daily life, we continued to work with close to 40 children, conducting classes, covering basics and bridging the learning gaps.
EDUCERE LEARNING CENTER:
As our work drew attention and parents saw the progress in children, the village authorities and parents requested us to formally run a primary school. This presented a wonderful opportunity to establish a model learning center, a center that could at once be the focal point of creative learning and be the source of ripples of change across the region. Hence, the Educere Learning Center was started to address the learning needs of the children in the village and in the region. The Learning Center started formally in February 2022 and 25 children from the village were enrolled, with Orenda Initiatives providing teachers
and resources. However, the children are formally enrolled in the existing Government Primary school in the village.
PLAN FOR THE NEXT TWO YEARS.
Orenda Initiatives is evolving and fine tuning its program and model in the Center for the academic year 2022, targeting particularly the early childhood education (Nursery to Grade 4). The plan is to prepare and create learning materials and resources, teacher training modules, and refine the teaching methodology over the year. Our teachers are undergoing a preschool training program from a highly reputed Eklavya school in Ahmedabad, Gujarat. The idea is to make the Center a model learning school for the region in the long run. To this extent, our immediate goals are –
- Establish an activity/block room with the following materials – Maria Montessori tools, Froebel Gifts. Caroline Pratt blocks, Taleem blocks, puzzles and other educational material. 2. Undergo training on how to use these materials to teach children.
- Implement the preschool curriculum provided by Eklavya School and customize and fine tune it to meet the needs of the children in the region.
- Procure all the necessary resources to execute this curriculum.
- Develop a teacher training module.
PLAN FOR THE LONG TERM:
After the academic year 2023, while we continue to develop Educere Learning Center in one village, we plan to open similar learning centers in two more villages in partnership with the local school and village authorities. After establishing and stabilizing the program in all the three villages over 2 years (from 2024 to 2025), we hope to scale up and partner with the district authorities to identify 10 more villages where the early childhood education isn’t available and establish Educere Learning Centers. The teachers would be hired from the villages and would be responsible for anchoring the programs. However, they would be trained by experts and would work alongside experienced teachers whom we hope to rope in from various parts of the country.
