Sutradhar Vaishali Joglekar June 23rd, 2002 - Vaishali introduced her field trip to India from Oct 2001 to January 2002. - She worked for a Bangalore NGO - Sutradhar for 2 months. The NGO is coordinated by Ashoka Foundation Fellow - Ms. Mandira. - Sutradhar designs, collects and sells learning toys for distribution to assist teachers and mentors in enriching the child learning process. Vaishali had an impression that the toys were to be targetted for sale to low income needy children and schools run for the same by NGO's. - She elucidated on the reality of Sutradhar selling these toys to children of well-to-do families. She opined that this seemed like bargain buys for the wealthy families and that Sutradhar was not catering to the section of people that would have probably benefitted the most - the children from low income families. - The learning toys outlet of Sutradhar generates about 60% gross profit margin. Profits are split between Corpus fund and Operating Expenses in 25% to 30% respectivly plus some overheads. - Sutradhar has a peer networking forum for teachers on a regular basis. These forums bring together academia and professionals in the area of child pedagogy and related fields. The teachers, again Vaishali felt improper, were from private and well off local schools. - Vaishali next involved with "Jodo Gyan" in New Delhi run by a Ms. Usha Menon. JodoGyan has a primary goal, in the vision of the coordinator, "... to engage the adults of the community of North East Delhi - Shakarpur, in a peoples' movment for literacy and Education" - JodoGyan has plans to design, create and manufacture educational toys - especially scientific in nature, and to setup a manufacturing base. - Even though Vaishali did not feel much enthused by Sutradhars' work, she discussed the two centers (named above), as being models for Education Resource Centers. She encouraged a discussion on the needs and spread of such ERCs' across India and its benefits.