"Balwadis" are pre-primary education centers situated across the rural, tribal and urban slum areas of India. As part of the Central Government's Integrated Child Development Services Scheme, these government schools are supposed to ensure growth and development of pre-school underprivileged children between the ages of 2-5 years. Asha Chennai is involved in a project to improve the quality of education provided by these schools. The areas of focus are to provide solid basic literacy like recognition of symbols, alphabets, pictures, singing rhymes that should serve as bedrock for future development for these children. Concentrated in the urban Chennai area, this project currently includes 400 children in six of these balwadis whose parents are mostly daily laborers, drivers and vendors. This project was started in 2000 when Asha volunteers observed that these schools lacked basic infrastructure, teaching materials' and necessary teaching guidance to develop a child's skills during his/her formative years. After obtaining the required permission from the Government of India, Asha Chennai set out to help these schools to bring some positive changes and improve the quality of services provided.
The proposed 2009-10 WAH budget will help Asha Chennai continute to extend its best practices and services to the six balwadi centers where they will provide trained teachers along with teaching aids and materials.
Asha Chennai volunteers had observed that these schools lack the basic infrastructures like water, electricity, toilets, leaking roofs etc. Healthy hygienic practices were also lacking in these places. Besides, the teachers lacked proper guidance and teaching materials, and were mostly involved in administrative works and the children thus remained inactive majority of the time. In order to improve the quality of services, Asha Chennai started to provide teachers, teaching materials, training to teachesr and guidance to these balwadis. These schools work within the conventional teaching methods with the following developmental goals for kids between 2-5 years of age:
Cognitive Development - Thinking and reasoning abilities that help children learn letters, colours, counting, and develop their imagination.
Language Development - They begin to learn more number of words between 50 words at age 2 to thousands of words at age 5, so we provide educational materials (books, cards, charts, etc) that enhance their vocabularies.
Sensory and Motor Development - Kids at age 2 learn to walk up and down stairs, make small strokes with a pencil, kick a ball, while kids at age 5 can make simple drawings and write some letters.
These schools provide education free of cost and financial support is provided by individual donors and organizations like Asha for Education. Parents are also being involved in the process by providing feedback of their children as well as raising awareness about health and safety aspects. The centers involved in this projects are:
1) Oorur Kuppam (Nos. 1078 & 1082) - two centers in one building (twin)
2) Ekambaram Pillai St. (1054 & 1087) - twin centers
3) Ekambaram Pillai St. (1057)
4) Nochi Nagar (1063 & 1064) - twin centers
5) Nochi Kuppam (1065)
6) Nochi Kuppam (1066)
The Work An Hour 2009 campaign is supporting projects that are focused towards improvement in the quality of education and training provided in schools for underprivileged children. The Chennai Balwadi Improvement project works with a goal that synchronizes with this year's WAH overall goal and mission. The important feature about this project and WAH proposal is that it is solely focused on the quality aspect of education.
