Project Brief: Awareness campaign for enrollment of Economically Weaker Section (EWS) students into formal schools under Section 12 of the RTE Act.
Project Type: Community Awareness Programs (description)
Primary Focus: to go to formal school (description)

Secondary Focus: creating resources

Area: Tribal
Supporting Chapter Contact:
Stanford

Status: CLOSED - ENDED
Project Steward: Pradeep Jayaraman
Co-Steward: Rahul Batra
Project Partner(s): Apoorva Murari
Project Address: INDUS Action - Project Eklavya
K-96, B K Dutt Colony,
Jor Bagh Road,
New Delhi, Delhi 110003
Stewarding Chapter: Stanford

Section 12 of the Right to Education Act mandates 25% reservation in entering classes of unaided private schools for children, between the age group of 3-6 years, belonging to economically weaker (family income of less than a lakh a year) or socially disadvantaged groups. Often those belonging to economically weaker sections are daily wage laborers, self-employed or hired on contractual basis.

Project Eklavya, based in Delhi, is the effort to enable an opportunity for education for such sections of the society. Divided into two phases of information campaign & subsequent holistic inclusion in classrooms, Project Eklavya is Indus Action's first initiative in Delhi to break the social, psychological and technical barriers that impede the implementation of this law.

The awareness campaign, focusing on bridging the information gap, includes key partnerships with government institutions of Mission Convergence and Integrated Child Development Scheme, Ministry of Women and Child Development giving IA access to their community hubs in South Delhi alongside media partnerships with Hindustan Times, DEN and Hathway.

Phase Two focuses on tracking children admitted in schools to understand the problems they face in private schools. Concurrently, qualitative field research is planned to measure social integration practices and best practices of social integration across the board and to motivate, encourage other schools to constitute social integration committees.

Indus Action also plans to create a national coalition on Section 12 of the RTE to identify best practices across the country, escalating concerns of varying states, coaching low-performing states at the National Level.