urban education:
India

PORTFOLIO:

Urban Education

GEOGRAPHICAL IMPACT:

Jaipur, Rajasthan, India

ORGANIZATION:

Bodh Shiksha Samiti

SUMMARY:

Bodh Shiksha Samiti community schools were launched in 1987, as the result of a unique partnership between residents of Jaipur’s Gokulpuri urban slum community and a group of likeminded men and women. Today, Bodh has both urban and rural schools, and acts as a resource agency for providing training and other support for schools seeking to improve the quality of education available to underprivileged children. Overall, Bodh reaches out to more than 26,000 deprived children through bodhshalas and government schools in the state of Rajasthan.

Yogendra Bhushan, Director, Bodh Shiksha Samiti, Jaipur

I was an activist as a student. After graduation, I spent a year exploring the Jaipur slums, and I finally landed in one small community where the people were keen to start something of their own to address the issue of education. They were deprived of educational opportunities and facilities, and were just making ends meet, so they couldn’t dream very big. But they knew that basic literacy would keep them from being cheated in even simple, day-to-day exchanges. And they knew it would help their children avoid deprivation.

During those days, the government was only concerned with education in rural communities. Our view was different. From the very first day, we said that urban children needed both access to and quality in schools. And over the years, Bodh has been recognized for having among the most progressive curriculums and highest quality schools for deprived urban communities. Today, urban children have comparatively far better access to government schools. But quality is still a big problem. So we’ve been invited to do several major projects for the government of Rajasthan. One project supported by the UN established 200 formal schools working in Rajasthan slums. Another effort that the foundation is supporting is a sort of R&D exercise where we’re looking at how to implement comprehensive and continuous assessment, and a progressive, child-centered curriculum, into government schools. The pilot is in 60 schools. The goal is to take the learnings and implement the program in all government schools in Rajasthan.

Akhtar Ali, Cimmunity Leader

I’ve been associated with Bodh since the time when the first Bodh teacher started teaching a small group of 13 or 14 children. Establishing the school was difficult. This is a slum area – you often have two families sharing one room. In such a scenario, where is the land to build a school? We told the people living where the school is, “Unless our children study, they will end their lives as laborers.” And then we started having classes there. But there was resistance. Someone went and reported illegal activity, and the police came and booked quite a few of us.

Although I myself am uneducated, my children have all studied. All are graduates, and my daughter is a teacher in a government school. Today, there is hardly a child in our community who does not attend school. It’s probably less than 5 percent. But earlier, in this very community, there was a time when a girl of 10-12 years was not even allowed out of the house; forget about educating her.