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Balaji Sampath, one of the pioneers of AID, recently served as the chief guest at Pratham's Annual Charity Event in California, U.S.A. The following is a reproduction of an article that appeared in India West on November 14th, 2006.
By KETAKI GOKHALE
India-West Staff Reporter
SAN JOSE, Calif. - A feverish momentum built up at Pratham Bay Area's Nov. 3 fundraiser. Around 600 people gathered in a hall in the heart of the San Jose Convention Center here, to thrill to the Hindi film classics sung by Poonam Bhatia and to, as many attendees said, "support a good cause." Even before Bhatia mounted the stage for a second round of songs, attendees had pledged and donated over $100,000 to this non-profit organization that works with local communities and with the corporate sector to implement low-cost educational programs at Indian government schools and rural learning centers.
Founded in 1994 as a UNICEF initiative, Pratham's initial focus was on establishing and improving India's preschools. Over the coming years, Pratham expanded its operations to include primary schools, bridge courses, libraries, a health program, outreach to working and street children, book publishing, and computer literacy training. Door to door surveys, along with math and language skills assessments, help Pratham identify the educational needs of a basti - a defined slum or village community. Based on its findings, Pratham will initiate programs that will best suit the learning needs a given community - either preschools; "Learning to Read" programs that develop basic skills in children who are both in and out of school; "Reading to Learn" independent learning programs for children in school; "Shishuvachan" reading programs for four to six-year-olds; library programs; or outreach to working children.
In each community, Pratham relies on volunteers who meet certain education requirements to implement its programs. Today, Pratham works with nearly 5,000 communities, each comprising 250 to 300 households, spanning 12 states. The organization has over 70,000 children enrolled in its programs, and operates 4,500 children's libraries throughout India.
Pratham Bay Area coordinator Aruna Goradia told India-West that 10 to 15 percent of Pratham's fundraising revenues are spent on overhead costs. The funds raised by Pratham Bay Area this week will serve the educational needs of 167 bastis for one year. "This was the second major event we've done, and I feel very good about it," she said. "There was a lot of competition, with an [India Community Center] event going on right around the corner, and Deepak Chopra doing a book promotion. Taking all that into consideration, we were very pleased with the number of attendees."
She credited Bhatia's musical performance with the superb turnout. "I felt that she was very good, everyone enjoyed thoroughly her performance and her funny stories," she said. "It was a light-hearted concert, which people really enjoyed because it gave them a break from stressful events happening in their lives."
Bhatia charmed the audience with her lusty renditions of old Bollywood favorites like "Aaiye meherban," "Afsana likh rahi hoon," and "Ae dil mujhe bata de." She interspersed these with new Bollywood songs like "Kaisi paheli," and several duets with Los Angeles, Calif.-based Charanjit, including a soulful rendition of "Tere liye" from "Veer-Zaara," "Kajra re" from "Bunty Aur Babli," and the evergreen "Diwana hua badal."
In his half-an-hour on stage, chief guest Balaji Sampath shone also, but in a different way. A social entrepreneur and the founder of the Association for India's Development, Sampath spoke passionately about Pratham's work in Tamil Nadu. As a board member of Pratham Tamil Nadu, he was able to share his findings in the field with the Bay Area audience. A survey coordinated by his chapter found that over 50 percent of children in Tamil Nadu's government schools could not read Tamil. Sampath and his team demonstrated that the numbers were not a reason to despair. They descended on 182 of the schools and demonstrated that, in three months, all the children were able to read fluently when taught using Pratham methodology. "We've reached 8,000 government teachers and 700,000 children," Sampath told the audience. "We've promised to take our methods to all 30,000 schools in Tamil Nadu."
"The major difference [between Pratham and other nonprofit philanthropic organizations] is that we are able to go directly to the government," explained Sampath. "We tell them that they can either ignore it, or do something about it with our help."
Donations, and tears, flowed freely when Pratham U.S.A. ambassador Yogi Patel took the podium. His slide show on Pratham's operations ended with a slide depicting his father's signature - a smudged fingerprint - alongside Patel's own signature in three languages: Hindi, Gujarati, and English. The juxtaposition of father to son, illiterate to literate, drove home Pratham's message of children's education.
"Our goal is to eradicate illiteracy from India," Aruna Goradia told India-West. "I feel that giving a child an education solves a lot of other problems. The root of social problems - child labor, trafficking of humans, domestic abuse - is ignorance. Removing ignorance with education is the best thing you can do, because you're taking care of all these problems."
Nationwide, Pratham U.S.A. has raised $3 million this year through fundraisers, direct mailings, and smaller concerts. Patel told India-West he is hopeful that Pratham Bay Area, only two years old, will soon become an area establishment. "We've had good growth in the past two years," said Patel, "but it is in the third or fourth year that you grow to a new level, that has been our experience in other regions."
"I think that in the Bay Area there are a lot of organizations, and that Pratham is relatively new," Patel said. "But I also think that Pratham's work is a low-cost and scalable solution to India's most critical problem of illiteracy."
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