Asha Darshan started as a proud and humble effort to impart educational upliftment in a poverty-ridden, rural Assamese area through infrastructure improvements and alimental assistance. The project strongly believes that overall socio-economic development can be brought about in the area by elevating the living standard and promoting general awareness related to the rights and responsibilities of the populace. Providing vocational skills, heightening literacy levels, supplying mid-day meals are few most emphasized features and tasks among many others that the project aims at accomplishing. Asha Darshan is an Asha Stars project under the Asha Silicon Valley chapter.
The project kicked off with the initial discussions about the project proposal in January of 2000. The idea was to add 3 more Balwadis to a group of 7 Balwadis that were being run under the banner of 'Sevika Niketan', along with bringing additional improvements to the overall system.
In the beginning of 2001, newsgroups were set up and phone calls made to the on-site locals affiliated with running the project.
Asha started funding the project starting November of 2001 and site visits were conducted soon after.
Beginning of 2002 saw the establishment of additional Balwadis, organization of training camps, formation of village committees to monitor the Balwadis on day-to-day basis and peace-making activities.
At the crux of the mission is boosting of education levels by furnishing the required infrastructure and providing food help in the form of mid-day meals. The goals are to target areas that have non-existent literacy rates and absence of government schools in the vicinity, strive to attract and retain the underprivileged first generation learners, spread awareness among parents, enhance the quality of teacher training programs as well as the teaching techniques and material. Secondary focus is to facilitate vocational training programs for the betterment of the economy and women empowerment.
Other objectives are to help maintain peace in the area and quell any violence arising from political disturbances as well as to impart education to improve the health and living conditions of the local community through self help groups.
The target area for this project is a rural region of northwestern Assam that hugs the Bhutanese border in the north and is lined by the Brahmaputra River in the south. These plains of the Brahmaputra Valley are home to many disadvantaged masses that are in constant struggle of finding survival methods and in many cases are required to travel to the Indo-Bhutan border in search of odd jobs for sustenance. Adverse political situation resulting in frequent insurgency activities and continuing violence compounds the hardships. Such a lifestyle leads to negligence towards a decent upbringing of the children who are known to comprise 14-20% of the total population in the region. It is Asha Darshan's attempt to encourage academic enrollment for these children of primary, pre-primary and middle school age and provide for other necessities that might otherwise play a role in deterring these engagements.
Location
Asha Darshan is located and works in the Nalbari and the newly formed Baska districts of Assam, operating educational centers around the Tamulpur and Kumarikata areas. Baska was formed under the Bodo rule and lies about 15kms south of the Bhutanese border. It is located in the plains of the tributaries of Brahmaputra River, at the foothills of the mighty Himalayas. The region is abundantly green, with large fields of paddy, mustard, banana, coconut and areca nut. It is hard to gather that an area as such, that is meant to be linked with anything that is beautiful and peaceful, is fraught with insurgency.
School Centers
There are a total of 11 centers being run by Asha Darshan. These are located in:
i) Garughutu
ii) Anthaibari
iii) Jhargaon
iv) Hajongbasti (Angarkata)
v) Satyanarayanpur
vi) Panbari (Singramari)
vii) Nagapur
viii) Naumati
ix) Lakhinarayanpur
x) Shantipur
xi) Devinagar
xii) Danswrang
Quality of Education
Teacher Training
In such a rural area as this, it is a difficult task to find teachers who have been trained in basic teaching abilities. Moreover, teachers have minimal qualification with most having passed only class 10. The project is forced to hire and work with such teachers. Therefore training the teachers in both basic knowledge in their subjects and improving their teaching skills set is very crucial to improving the quality of education imparted to the children.
Regular, intensive training in basic knowledge of subjects, especially, English (reading, writing and speaking), Math and Science is planned for the project. There will be at least two training sessions held this year. These will both be conducted by Right Start (another project supported by Asha-SV). Each session will extend for about a week. The teacher performance will be assessed after each training session and the following session will be planned on the basis of this assessment.
Right Start is a teacher training project coordinated by Ms. Lakshmi Suryanarayanan. She has been coordinating this project for 10 years and has contributed to teacher training programs at many Asha schools around India and also other schools in Tami Nadu. Right Start has enormous experience in teacher training and we hope to utilize this for Asha Darshan. Right Start will provide multiple training sessions to Asha Darshan teachers over a period of two years. Successive training session will build on previous sessions based on the improvement in the performance of the teachers. Right Start believes that teachers should be enabled to learn as they teach. This strategy is crucial for Asha Darshan where the teachers will continue to teach as they improve their knowledge in the subject and also their teaching abilities. We expect that this intensive training strategy will improve the quality of education imparted at Asha Darshan. Also, such intensive training program and the exposure derived by such programs will improve the confidence levels of the teachers and aid in teacher capacity building.
