88 children, their parents, the teachers and guests celebrated the end of the school year dancing! Read more about the activities and initiatives here:
Impact Measurements as on June 30th, 2019 after the completion of Bridge program
Discussion points about the table
1. We had enrolled 147 children throughout the year 2018-19.
2. There are 68 children who have relocated since beginning.
3. We have 79 children at the end of our bridge program 2018-19.
4. There are 11 children who are below 6 years and may be repeating Bridge Program next year.
5. We mainstreamed 37 of the graduating children into Low-cost Private schools and 23 children in Hongasandra Govt school as on June 30th, 2019.
Challenges faced by the team in 2018-19
1. Compared to last year, we have added four new slums this year. So we had to extensively communicate with all these new slums along with old slums to enable them understand Bridge program and to have engagement we wanted with families.
2. In some cases, Poor Attendance of children, parental non-co-operation led to non- bridging their gap in education .
3. Poor Attendance of parents during regular Parents Meeting day, on special occasions.
4. Insufficient rooms to conduct classes. Or two classes in one room = noisy.
5. Ignorance, unstable mind and illiteracy of parents at times created challenges.
6. Theft and Community disputes among the slum dwellers as well as with local people in slums caused turbulence and changes/moving amongst families.
7. Non-availability of efficient community mobilisers, that work for our program and live in slum.
8. Unable to track relocated children and family as they change their phone numbers frequently and least bothered to enrol their children again in BEETF partner Bridge Schools..
Lessons learned
- Educate the parents during enrolment itself to aid in ensuring regularity of their children attending school.
- Conduct meeting in all the slums at least once in a year.
- Complete their basic education by December as per divided levels and start issuing mainstream targeted class State Board Text books for each and every child and impart from January.
- Target to mainstream majority of children in Low-cost Private schools as there are more drop-outs if we mainstream them in Government schools due to language barrier.
- Support the Government school to strengthen their system, infrastructure , education and develop rapport with DDPI and higher officials of Education Department .
- Get permission and co-operation to Conduct After School Programme in Mainstreamed private School premises itself during 3.30pm- 5 pm as Government School has lots of resistance and difficulties to provide permission for ASP after school hours.
- Tracking relocated children and connect their parents with any other BEET Force Bridge school partners to complete bridge program (who run their Program near to their community) We tried it for multiple times but could not succeed as parents are least bothered to take efforts to put them back at schools. So the lesson is that we need to contact the respective Bridge partners and give their contacts to them instead of following up with parents.
