"Education makes one disciplined, discipline hones one’s skills, skills help one become wealthy and wealth, combined with conscience, makes one happy and contented" says an ancient Sanskrit sloka.

This can be described as the philosophy behind Development Alternatives’ aim to empower rural women through its flagship programme ‘TARA Akshar+’.

According to the Human Development Report 2003, India is ranked as low as 127th in the list of developed countries even though the country is extremely rich in human and natural resources. Even today when advancement in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has reached a new level, most people are still denied its benefits as there is dearth of sources of, and access to, quality information. As a result, equitable society, national development, awareness and social justice are mere theoretical concepts for the majority of the population.

The ITC based TARA Akshar+ programme aims at creating a sense of self-respect in women and the stories of women whose lives have been changed by this initiative are getting more and more numerous.

TARA Akshar+ works on the concept of memory techniques which were used by ancient Greeks and Romans. It was found during the experimental phase that up to 50 new words a day can be learnt and remembered with the judicious use of memory techniques. These techniques were used in creating a multi-media computer software programme which was first tested on a batch of adult illiterates in and around Delhi with very encouraging results. After a lot of experiments, numerous revisions and consultations with expert educators and psychologists around the world, TARA Akshar+, a manual, protocol and training course was finally developed.

A pilot study was conducted on a rural community living near Delhi.

The first batch of 24 students was tested after 18 days and it was found that 75% of them could manage simple reading. The students were then encouraged to join a Reading Club which was run in the local Community Hall every day. They could come there and practice reading to improve their reading speed.

The results were very encouraging with most of them managing to read and write. The drop-out rate was only 20%, an astonishingly low figure, as anyone who has tried running similar schemes in the Indian rural areas will tell you.

TARA Akshar+ which aims at eliminating illiteracy from eight of the Hindi speaking states, namely Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Uttarakhand, Haryana, Rajasthan and Delhi NCR has so far succeeded in making over 60,000 women functionally literate.

In its current avatar, TARA Akshar+ programme, in one of its major roll-outs, is currently carrying the literacy programme in three districts of eastern Uttar Pradesh, Mirzapur, Sant Ravidas Nagar and Jaunpur.

This project aims at making more than 120,000 women literate in less than three years’ time. It was started last year and soon more than 20,000 women enrolled in the programme.

In order to maintain a high standard, the programme has undergone various modifications with regard to customisation and implementation.

As TARA Akshar+ is committed to reaching more and more people, a new implementation structure has been designed. It ensures maximum results through quality control and monitoring.

The program is moving as planned and more than 250 field team members placed at various positions take care of over 200 centres in these three districts.

The first teaching cycle was rolled out in March 2013 in 100 centres which enrolled 4368 illitarate women. It was heartening to see that only 5 women dropped out and all but one of the rest cleared the examination. In April 2013, the second teaching cycle was rolled out in Jaunpur district where 75 centres were operationalised with an enrolment of over 3000 women and no drop-outs were reported.

While the project was running, we realised that there exists a heavy demand for this innovative programme because it takes only 56 days to complete the objective with impressive results. It was observed that, women are eager to learn and improve their status given the right motivation.

TARA Akshar+ programme is now looking towards additional funding sources to take this initiative to a still higher level and grow by a large factor every year. q

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