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Nursery inaugurated June 5, 2008, The Hindu

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NewTrust supports education in rural areas - Adyar Times

This Trust has been formed by V. Ranganathan who conceived the idea along with his friends J. Vijay and C. K. Sridhar.

Ranganathan says, "We educate rural children at pre primary level"

"We take in children from the ages of 3 to 5 years and prepare them and prepare them in such a manner that they are ready to join the first standard."

They have so far established around 50 centres in Tamil Nadu.

"These centres are established in villages where even government schools provide education from 1st standard."

The students at these centers will be taught by a person from the locality itself, he says.

"We ensure that not more than 20 students are in a class," he says.

The classes are conducted for two hours on five days of the week and the teacher is paid Rs.20 for each student.
"We have received contributions from corporates like G.E. Capital and the Rotary has also come forward to help us," he said

Vidyarambam functions at No.33, 3rd Cross Street, Dr. Radhakrishnan Nagar, Thiruvanmiyur. Ph: 4465590

Educational Trust opens new centre - Adyar Times

The Vidyarambam Trust recently started its 86th learning centre at Therkupattu, a village near Kovalam. This learning centre will be sponsored by the Rotary Club of Chennai Mid City

At this centre, around 20 children in the age group of three to five years will be coached over a period of 18 months to prepare them to join first standard of either government or other schools.

The children were given free books and bags on January 17 when the centre was inaugurated. The Trust has centers in nine districts in Tamil Nadu. The Trust is run by V. Ranganathan, resident of Thiruvanmiyur along with his friends J. Vijay and C.K. Sridhar. They invite donations from the public to pay for the tutors and the books. Donations are exempt from Income Tax under section 80 G.

Vidyarambam Trust is at No.33, 3rd Cross Street, Dr. Radhakrishnan Nagar, Thiruvanmiyur Ph 24462800, 24465590. Information can also be had from their web site, www.vidyarambam.org.

Back to School - The Hindu

Kooram that lies far to the north-west of Kancheepuram town in Tamilnadu is a poor village. It has a main village, roughly two square kilometers, with nearly 700 families and a peripheral colony where another 180 lower caste families live. The caste consciousness has not raised the well being, with the higher caste lot probably a few shades better off than the landless, dispossessed lower caste sections that have been banished to the periphery of Kooram.

Almost a square with narrow zigzag lanes cutting across the length and breadth, Kooram, according to Viswanathan the defacto headman (his wife, Anjali Viswanathan, is the elected village panchayat president), has five Siva temples, each nearly 1000 years old. "Despite such traditional and historical wealth, our village is not developed. With all these temples, it could easily be a tourist spot," sighed Viswanathan.

Though tourism could raise the land value and trigger some development as investors stake funds on tourism-related facilities, nothing would help more than a broader outlook and a spirit of tolerance - qualities rare in villages crowded with illiterate masses, to whom castes matter more than financial prowess and status a human being.

The roads around the village are slushy after a recent spell of rain, and one stretch to the west is particularly bad after laden trucks ploughed the road.

Kooram, where life seems to inch forward slower than a movie in slow motion, seems to have woken up to the need to initiate the very young into the world of education. In a Panchayat schoolroom, four women sat on the floor listening to Prema Veeraraghavan, resource person of the Chennai-based Vidyarambam Trust. These four village women, with basic school education sat listening to the methods of instructing children. Outside a group of children played noisily on the empty corridor outside a locked classroom.

"Do not force anything on children. Give them some activity that will help develop their hand-eye co-ordination, such as threading the beads. Even when you teach them Tamil, make sure you write the simplest letters of the alphabet first. You do not have to follow the usual order of alphabets strictly. There can be only 20 children in a classroom, none less than three years old or more than five. For the first level education no child should be more than four years old," the resource person said.

Each teacher was given a kit - a mobile black board, charts, pencil, chalks, duster and packets of flexible plastic numbers as well as English and Tamil alphabet. The enlisted students sat quietly in groups. The anganavadi instructor - a middle aged woman - sternly kept the group of fidgety, energetic children checkmated on an invisible rectangle that their tender bottoms marked on the cement floor. Some even had their finger on their lips, in strict conformity to the anganavadi teacher's command.

The classrooms were either panchayat schools, or a room in the house of the instructor or in a room of a benevolent villager. Even temple premises were turned into makeshift classrooms. The rooms were not always well ventilated, and often had no lights or fans. The volunteer teachers preferred to gather the children away from such punishing enclosures. Even some shade under a tree was preferred to the hell an unventilated room could be 20 pre-school children. Luckily, village children were unfamiliar with the facilities city children expect, demand and get.

There were many children who were less than three years and some older than five. The volunteer teachers who had got the group together were asked politely to remove these over aged or under aged children from the target group.

Most of the teachers were young though one could never be sure if each was highly motivated. The teachers were paid a monthly stipend and were required to keep records of children attending the classes. In other words, the familiar attendance registers had to be kept up to date.

"We are using the Montessori method because it gives children a lot of freedom. Nothing is forced down their throats. Because of this, village children will like to attend school and listen to the teachers. Once the foundation is strong, these children will find it easy to adapt themselves to the regular stream," said Dr. K.R.Subramanian, an anaesthesiologist who has turned to social work.

Though the children were a little hesitant at first, they soon overcame their fears and focussed on the activities in the classrooms, enjoying every moment. The Trust gave away lightweight shoulder bags to each child, and all loved it. The name of the Trust screen-printed on the bag was no eyesore.

What mattered was the villagers realized that if children could be motivated to attend pre-school before they were old enough to be driven to work or given away as bonded labour for a handful of rupees, the parents might not hesitate to put their children through regular school. The children also might not throw a tantrum when asked to go to school. They would remember the pleasure and freedom in pre-school.

Whether the Government schools provide them with equally enjoyable education is beside the point. "They would be more adaptable," said Dr.Subramanian. Though the intervention by the Vidyarambam Trust has been on a very small scale, there is little doubt that the quality of instruction despite the inherent flaws would help village children enter the world of formal education happily.

A noble pursuit - The Hindu

For the past 20 years, V. Ranganathan wanted to "work for children's education" but his job as an automobile engineer in the Gulf meant his intention remained just that - a well-meaning intention until he retired and decided to actually bring about the change he wanted.

After he returned to India and visited the poorer district in Tamil Nadu, he realized that children in the three to five age group in rural areas received hardly any education or training. "This is also the reason for the high drop-out rate in rural primary schools. Since
most of the children are first-time learners (their parents being daily labourers or farmers), they are not able to cope with lessons," he explains. He also realized that children in the districts equated school with a free lunch and carried, not books, but plates to school in their satchels. Ranganathan returned to Chennai and started the Vidyarambam Trust to provide pre-primary education to children in rural areas.

Over the past nine months, the Trust has started 86 centres all over the State, providing free pre-primary education, based on the Montessori method and ancient Indian systems of teaching, to more than 1600 kids. Each centre takes in about 20 children between the ages of two and four-and-a-half. The tutor is a person who can read and write, and more importantly interested in helping children learn. "Our tutors are SSLC pass, graduates, post-graduates and some of them are just eighth standard drop outs, but they are intelligent and interested in seeing that kids don't drop-out of school for the same reasons they had to," says Prema Veeraraghavan, a former KFI teacher, who has formulated the syllabus for the children.

The Vidyarambam Trust formulated its own syllabus when it realized that most material available in the market was geared for children who could already read and had pictures and sentences, the children could not relate to. "So rather than having kings and queens to depict alphabets, we've got cows, leaves etc. that children see everyday," explains Prema.

The learning aids are straightforward and interesting - number cards, large alphabets and colourful books. The focus is on getting the children identify and recognize the alphabets rather than be able to read complete sentences, "We realized that the first standard books have complete sentences, which are difficult for children who have not even seen alphabets before. So the methods we use help the kids have fun while they learn," she says. In one of the lessons, the alphabets are written on cards and distributed to the students. When the teacher calls out an alphabet, for example an 'aa' the kids with the 'aa' round their necks have to go to the teacher.

The trust pays the teachers Rs. 400 per month and the annual cost of education for each child is Rs. 600. The tutors make classes in their homes or in a place where the children will be comfortable, even if it's just in the village square. The Trust insists that classes are taken for two hours a day, five days week for 18 months.

This June, the Trust will send its first 500 students to primary school. Weekly contact classes will be conducted to help them with any difficulties they face in school. "Pre- school training removes the fear of school and sparks interest in learning, so that they want to go to school, when the time comes," says Ranganathan.