Samanta aims to carry on its work in Education with Forest Dwelling - Van Gujjar & Taungyas - in the coming times. As we pursue our work we intend to follow a coherent step by step approach to reach more children and families through our work model.
EXPERIENCE
As we have worked in the Lower Shivalik range housing "Rajaji National Park & Tiger Reserve' in forest schools and community some challenges are explicit. The per capita reach for an individual is low, simply looking at the average square kms for population habitation and forest topography. This challenges the existing norms of schools and distance from habitation for primary, middle and senior schools (Government). In these regions Forest Schools have been the norm which are starkly different from the Govt. schools that we experience and see. As a result the ideas of Community Ownership, Leadership in Education takes precedence in order to overcome the challenges of - access, availability education.
PARTICIPATORY ACTION
We at Samanta have been working on a shared action approach coordinating with - Forest Department, Parents, Community elders, Youth and Children - to work on access and availability of Education to children. The work evolved in the COVID times as we devised methods (project based learning, worksheets etc), means (Youth, Community) and knowledge resources to carry on education as schools remained shut. These communities like rural areas had Zero access to Digital mediums of Education. As we carried on working with Youth for a while the challenges during COVID could be mitigated.
HUB & SPOKE MODEL
The HUB & SPOKE model is an outcomes of the learnings from the participatory action as mentioned above. The model is depicted below
LC - Learning Centre FS - Forest School WEG - Women Education Groups
As in the image above, we are looking at working with Community Youth as fellows comprising girls and boys from the Community. These are youth who have completed schooling to a certain level. We have been identifying the Youth for the last 2 years. The purpose was to develop shared ownership and understanding around education challenges. Now we are looking at building capacities of these youth to address the community challenges due to lack of education. The fellowship program aims to develop SPOKE ends which would be working at the community level to reach more children and address the issues of education. Samanta acts as the HUB which provides - 1. Knowledge Resources 2. Content 3. Individual Support 4. Linkages - to implement solutions developed by the Youth.
We are happy to listen in and discuss, kindly get connected on samantaconnect@gmail.com!
(PRASHANT)