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Swanirvar: Redefining Education |
Adar Naiya hails from a Nepalese family and was removed from class V of a local Hindi school in Kolkata because his family could not afford all the books assigned by his teachers.
It was for children like Adar, who were labeled as failures by the mainstream schooling system, that Swanirvar started the Shikshamitra School in Kolkata in 2005, with an alternative curriculum and pedagogy that provided avenues for more diverse learning.
Dr Sujit Sinha started Swanirvar in the North 24 Parganas district of West Bengal in 1989, with the idea of developing the rural area holistically with the help of local people. Their primary focus is on improving the quality of education and health, developing appropriate rural technologies, implementing income generation and savings activities and pursuing sustainable agriculture methods. Swarnirvar now works in more than 58 villages in 4 blocks of Baduria, Deganga, Swarupnagar and Basirhat 1.
 At Shikshamitra, the use of interactive group activities like elocutions, debates, discussions and stage performances (Rang Manch) in teaching have improved teacher-student relationship, encouraged higher student participation, unearthed hidden talents and skills and nurtured leadership and teamwork in the students.
Riya Das was a 10 year old dyslexic with very irregular attendance in schools. However the co-operative environment at Shikshamitra instilled in her a new sense of purpose – her language skills improved; she became the most responsible class monitor.
Swanirvar started experimenting with activity based learning in 1997, with the creation of the Kishor-Kishori Bahini (KKB). By engaging the youth in village development work, the KKB program made learning relevant to their immediate environment, while imparting hands-on skills. KKB currently trains over 400 high-school students in 7 villages to vaccinate animals, conduct door-to-door surveys, maintain weather charts and draw village maps.
To spread the successful education models to more schools, Swanirvar has set up an Education Resource Center in Kolkata, which would become a platform for teachers, educationists, NGOs, policy-makers and students to share, discuss and disseminate innovative ideas for improvement in quality of education system in over 100 government schools. Swanirvar also organized a 3-day workshop in Kolkata in November 2006, where local government school teachers were trained on the creative use of theater, dance, magic and film-shows in teaching various subjects like language, geography, environmental science and life-skill education. Moreover, Swanirvar’s pre-primary and primary schools, which directly reach out to over 1400 children, are today serving as a model for many schools.
Swanirvar also lays a lot of emphasis on local community participation in their schools – they regularly interact with the parents and encourage them to monitor and evaluate the success of their teaching aids and methodologies. This in turn made parents more willing to send their children to school, thereby resulting in higher enrolment and lower dropout rates at Shikshamitra and other Swanirvar schools.tl
Adar is no longer labeled a school drop-out. He attends the afternoon classes at Shikshamitra and is making rapid progress as a learner.
[Eds: AID chapters in College Park, Austin, San Diego and Houston have supported Swanirvar since 2000]
- Pallavi Shrivastava (Tempe) and Nirveek Bhattacharjee (Baltimore)
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