I want to share with you my personal experience with Vidyarambam, a sister organization of Pratham in the state of Tamilnadu. Vidyarambam is an eight-year old organization dedicated to providing enjoyable quality education to under-privileged pre-primary and primary children and to encourage them to successfully continue their education. I spent three months in Tamilnadu between November 2009 and Feb 2010 and visited a number of centers run by Vidyarambam in rural areas of Tamilnadu. Vidyarambam supports children’s education in Tamilnadu at many levels:

An Elementary School for children affected by tsunami in Nagapattinam

With help from Rotary Club of Chennai, and support from Department of Education and Department of Welfare, Vidyarambam is running an Elementary School, K – 5, in Nagapattinam. Most of the children come from families affected by the tsunami of 2004. My visit lasted a whole day and showed me how dedicated the teachers were and how much the children were enjoying the learning process. Vidyarambam has developed a number of books and learning aids, which are used in the school as well as in the centers in the rural villages. While the teachers are paid a nominal salary, the children get to attend the school for free. Along with Mr.Ranganathan, President of Vidyarambam, I visited the District Collector of Nagapattinam, Mr.Muniyanathan. The Collector was full of praise for Vidyarambam and reaffirmed his support in helping with some administrative issues.

While this school supports about 150 children in one location, the activities discussed in the following sections touch thousands of children all over the rural areas of Tamilnadu.

Supplemental Education for poor children in the villages of Thirunelveli District

I traveled to villages in Thirunelveli, a southern district in Tamilnadu, to see the village centers at work. Vidyarambam has established centers for supplemental education for children in three age groups by grade, K-1, 2-3, and 4-5 in 12 districts in Tamilnadu. The children come to these centers after school and learn from locally hired teachers six day a week, almost year around. The curriculum supports the grade school learning via fun and games based activities. I spent a day with children, teachers, and parents, and learned that this is greatly enjoyed by the children and highly valued by the parents. These centers are professionally run with trained teachers picked from the villages, assessors ensuring quality of education, and coordinators managing the logistics and yet at a low cost considering a little money goes a long way in small villages.

Mobile Toy Vans bringing educational toys to the children in Seerkazhi

Thanks to Aircel, a mobile phone service provider, Vidyarambam has three Mobile Toy Vans. These, carrying a collection of educational toys, are taken to a number of schools in villages periodically. The teachers trained in the games spend two hours a week with each group of children to learn and play the games. It was an eye-opener for me to see that the toys we take for granted offer so much novel entertainment to the children of the villages.

Supplemental English education to Grade Eight children in Sankaran Koil

It was a wonderful experience for me to see all the great effort by Vidyarambam board members and staff to help with providing quality education to the children in rural Tamilnadu. It was even more incredible to see the grateful parents and the happy children enjoying the fruits of all this effort by Vidyarambam, the structure and support provided by Pratham, and the generosity of the donors from all over the world supporting Pratham. I hope to visit more centers in 2010 and provide more support in the future to this worthy cause.