Read India Read!Illiteracy in India is an ongoing human catastrophe, but all too often, illiteracy is downgraded and is simply perceived as a problem, and therefore doesn’t receive the resources it deserves
N this country, there are 400 million people who are illiterate or nearly so. India holds one-third of the world’s illiterate. This means that men are tied to unskilled jobs and job mobility is not available to them. Women are disempowered because they can never learn the skills necessary to empower them. Their children will grow up illiterate because there is no role model driving them to education. China does not have a literacy problem. Kerala does not have a literacy problem. This shows that it is not an insurmountable problem. Heroic attempts were made in the past to address this issue using armies of volunteers, but we are still left with 400 million people who need a literacy programme. TARA Akshar was developed for the purpose of eradicating illiteracy as quickly and as painlessly as possible. TARA Akshar is a complete programme. It comprises computer software, playing cards, flash cards, posters, writing books and a protocol to hang them all together in the most effective way under the eye of a specially-trained trainer. Most importantly, the training programme for trainers guarantees that they will deliver the programme in local districts with consistent good results and minimal supervision.
Over the last 18 months, TARA Akshar has progressed from one-on-one classes with local muzdoors (labourers) on construction sites in Delhi to operations across several locations in the National Capital Region and Bundelkhand in Madhya Pradesh. All teachers are local, trained by TARA Akshar master trainers on the approved training course. All trainers go out to enroll learners. As a result, more than 400 students have become literate. Students are nearly all female, aged between 6 and 50. Our strict drop-out rate criteria is that a student is considered a drop-out if he/she has appeared on day one, but is no longer attending by day 30 for whatever reasons. Even by this criteria and despite other preoccupations like harvesting, family and hospital visits and other distractions, our drop out rate has been less than 15%. Originally we intended to maintain a rigorous inspection regime. However, we have reduced our inspections to a minimal level, but we are still getting our benchmark results. Learnings 1. The poor rural communities where we work are ready to accept programmes as long as they practically fit into their daily routine. So our current schedule, 100 minutes a day, six days a week for 30 days – suits us and fits in with their family commitments and attention span. 2. We regularly collect statistics from every teaching centre and publish them. We also announce them publicy at every opportuniy. This seems to have given us a great deal of credibility – almost nobody questions the feasibility and effectiveness of our programme. 3. A community-based organization needs to play the vital role of creating awareness about this kind of community programmes. Only the community can mobilize the community – local people and local success stories bring in local people. 4. We have ongoing research and development which utilizes field feedback to increase the effectiveness of the service. It must be remembered that most of our students have never previously studied and have never before seen a computer, so we are working on a blind alley where student feedback is our most valuable resource. The Road Ahead
TARA Akshar is now a mature product. It has been tried and tested in different states with different trainers under typically stressful conditions like inadequate, noisy, accommodation and minimal to erratic power situations. Our processes are now mature enough to cope with a large-scale roll-up. But there are only a handful of us. TARA Akshar needs to be adopted by other organizations and governments. For this reason we are setting up our business development initiatives by making presentations in as many conferences and to as many organizations as possible. Recently we attended and organised a kiosk at the Mission 2007 Conference in Chennai. We then presented at the Digital Education Conference in Delhi. Partnerships
Last year we participated in the Poorest Areas Civil Society (PACS) National Conference. Our stall generated responses from 80 PACS organizations. As a follow-up to those responses, we conducted a TARA Akshar Orientation Workshop for PACS partners in Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh. Many partners were keen to take TARA Akshar to their respective districts. Then in July 2007, the Mission 2007 exhibition and conference in Chennai organized by the M S Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF), gave us an opportunity to demonstrate the effectiveness of TARA Akshar to delegates from all over the country. In August 2006, we presented (in four languages) at the Digital Learning India 2006 conference in Delhi. We have now built up a huge demand for our product from NGOs and government departments all over the country. Our next milestone is to pass the 1000 graduates mark, which should happen shortly. Thereafter our benchmark is 100,000 graduates - which we want to achieve before the end of next year. We have been promised funding soon, this will enable us to expand our supply to meet at least some of the demands and to create new versions of TARA Akshar in other Indian languages. q Sandhya M.K smkumar@tarahaat.com
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