In February, Akshay and Jess visited Southern Rajasthan to meet with partners, see the progress in the education and health programmes, and discuss plans for the coming years.
It was fantastic to see the positive impact that the teams are continuing to have in the schools and wider community and to spend time with partners to share ideas for continuing to improve programmes.
Project Diganth: Improving Secondary Education
The team of eight facilitators are teaching engaging, fun lessons to students to support their learning in a safe and supportive environment. Foundational learning levels have always been lower than national average, but it is clear that focus in this area has led to improvements in students attainment and confidence.
Parental and community engagement has seen a huge improvement this year. The school committees have successfully advocated for long-awaited roof repairs at Mandwa and the construction of a girls' toilet at Jhed. While in India, a community meeting was held with an excellent turnout and positive inputs from students and parents on how learning can be supported at home.
A key area of improvement identified for next year is around careers. It is important that students understand their options following graduation and that thinking around this starts at a young age. Students want to continue their education or begin vocational training, but are unsure about the processes for how to do this.
Students also raised the issue that there are no female teachers or facilitators in either school. However, there are now female role models in the community, including two diganth graduates who are teaching in a primary education programme and a woman who has set up a successful girls frisbee group. We are looking to increase female representation in the school through these individuals and health team members.
“Now that I am learning how to read I am confident that I can read on my own, even when in college.” - Class 11 Student
Community Health Outreach Work
Our community health team is committed to improving antenatal and postnatal care for parents and their young children.
The women involved in the Safe Motherhood and Safe Childhood Programmes are benefiting from the support and advice provided by community health workers. The team have an excellent relationship with the women and are well trusted, helping to promote healthier and safer pregnancies, births, and childhoods.
One concern identified is that there are a number of children who are malnourished and not growing at the rate expected. We know this is an issue in the project area, and further work will be done by the health team to identify the main issues to be able to better support families to tackle this issue.
Global Hospital and Research Centre have provided a mobile clinic to the area for many years, but sadly due to reduced capacity of their team and the remoteness of the project area, this service will no longer be possible. We are working with partners to identify alternative provisions to support the wider community in accessing healthcare.
The Next Chapter
Educate for Life and our partners in India are committed to continuing to support the students and communities in the area that we work. Both the education and health programmes evidently continue to have a positive impact. It is particularly fantastic to see the first graduates from the Diganth Project coming back to be role models in their community and inspiring current students.
For the next year, the programmes will remain largely the same, with a few small changes and new priorities to continue to improve the services provided.
The Dam
Progress on the dam remains limited. The general feeling is that it will ultimately go ahead, although it is unlikely to be for the next few years. In the meantime, we are planning how best to support the community at different stages of the process and will continue to focus on providing excellent quality education and healthcare programmes.
Sexual Reproductive Health and Rights
In both the education and healthcare programmes, a topic which has come up is the lack of education and knowledge on sexual and reproductive health and rights. This is an area in which our partner Jatan Sansthan has significant expertise in. We are discussing how to integrate this into our programmes, which will likely include training for our health team to run sessions within the secondary schools and utilising sport as a method of engagement. This will provide valuable education, bring female role models into the schools, and bring more integration between the two programmes.
Thank you!
We are very grateful for your support to allow Educate for Life to continue to provide these programmes. If you would like to make a donation, your gift will support our community health and secondary school programme work. You will help us continue to change lives and make a difference.
