Chapter Meeting Minutes from Wed 11/11/09 Attended by: Teesta, Amit, Dilip, Sabita, Venki, Ashish, Manoj, Anshu, Chandrika, Meenakshi, Mayank, Shweta, Pankaj, Swamy, Sandhya, Vinod [1] Pratirodh Sansthan [Teesta] http://www.ashanet.org/projects/project-view.php?p=970 Residential/Educational facility for girls (mostly ages 9 -- 12) Girls are mostly from Bheel or Meena tribes, very backward Bonded labor is a major issue in the area Lok Shikshan Sansthan, the parent NGO has been working on these issues for a very long time The good connections of LSS with the local community has given enough confidence to the parents to send their girls here End of 1 year now 50 girls enrolled (down from 62 at start of year, and 55 6months ago) -- the budget has always been for 50 girls 2 teachers 2-3 floating volunteers who help with various activities, not paid Follow Digantar's curriculum (mostly free) Have started teaching some of the girls who were doing well, from govt curriculum, so they can sit for 5th grade exams They are also targeting some girls for admission to Kasturba Gandhi Residential Vidyalay (for girls) One concern is that they are a little laid back about the running of this program They dont seem to put extra effort to find finances for this school None of the three involved with the school are experienced in education One thing we've been discussing is trying to get some independent party go there and evaluate and help them organize their working The good part is they've managed to keep the 50 girls and getting them educated The teachers should probably get trained directly from Digantar They've put up the cots in the residential area Minimum wage increase in Rajasthan is why they want to increase the teacher's salaries Maybe we need a coordinator paid as part of the budget to have this school run properly The chapter plans to have a call with Harlalji and Sumanji and understand the motivational issues Call planned for Saturday night this week. All interested should join (previous attempts at calls have had 0 folks join besides the stewards). We'll have a discussion on the conference call after we are done talking with the NGO -- proposal will be put to vote only after that Overall, the chapter doesnt feel that there is any serious issue -- we need to understand the problem better to figure out how we can interact with them ---------------------------------------------------- Conference call with Pratirodh Sansthan from 11/14/09 Attendees: Khemrajij, Suman ji, Teesta, Amit (1) Suman ji has been engaged with this project since the beginning, and has been involved with the project still. The school being a residential facility for girls in rural setting, we all agreed that her involvement is very much essential. We agreed that Suman ji will be the overall coordinator responsible for the project. (1.1) Suman ji has attended education and training camps with Lok Jumbish in the past and has been deeply involved in field work; her primary area of focus will now be the residential school and its overall functioning. Suman ji mentioned that she is not very comfortable talking over the phone and therefore Khemraj ji has been communicating on behalf of the project. After further discussion we did agree that Suman ji will be the primary contact and will be in close contact with Teesta for project updates. (1.2) Harlal and Khemraj ji are involved in overall work of the Pratirodh Sansthan, and are involved in field work and activism. Harlal will continue to assist Suman ji in operations of the school, teaching materials, and training. (2) The school has two instructors that are trained, but, we all agreed that some form of annual training or workshop will greatly help. We discussed possibility of another AfE partner organization somehow helping with teacher training and generally auditing the operation of the school to identity areas of improvement. Suman ji was also very receptive and keen on the idea of gaining support for teacher training some fashion. (2.1) There are two teachers at the school - Priyanka Cheeba (B.A.), and Ajampa (B.A.). Priyanka has been with the project since the begining, while Ajampa joined around January '09 as a backfill for another instructor (Kailash) who was selected for a state watershed project and subsequently left her job as a tecaher. (2.1.1) Both the teachers stay with the girls, and take a break over alternate weekends to visit their homes or on need basis. (2.2) Although instructors are trained well, there is still very strong benefit of refresher training for instructors. We felt that in addition to directly impacting the quality of education for children, it also helps with motivation of teachers. (3) AfE-SV is the primary and only source of funds for the organization. LSS was funded out of AfE-Austin before the funding moved to SV. The organization has not been able to reach out to other organizations for alternate source of funds. (3.1) Pratirodh Sansthan has community involvement program that helps with building grassroots support for the school, and education in general. The progress in building support has been slow but steady. They are able to collect some resources e.g. clothes for girls, through the community mobilization. (3.3) The primary focus is on running the residential school for now. There are no plans on expansion, and that is one of the reasons for not reaching out for any other/alternate funding. (3.4) The current goal of project is to get as many girls to clear grade 5 exam and get admitted into Kasturba Gandhi Residential School system. Khemraj ji poited our again that supporting girls till they clear grade 5 is critical, once they get admitted into KGRS the chances of their continuing their education is very high. The Government agency support, in form of KGRS, is only available after grade-5 (3.5) There has been limited success if getting the state government support for education program outside of KGRS scheme, and for children under grade-5, however, this is something that Pratirodh Sansthan is working on actively. (3.6) Overall its felt that its critically important to continue to focus of the girls that have been inattendance for over a year now. There are 11 girls that are preparing for grade-5 examination and can be enrolled in KGRS scheme if they clear their exam. (4) The student to teacher ratio is technically 1:25, with 50 children and 2 teachers. However, the children are internally graded into three groups based on their learning level and teachers work with each of the three groups separately. Group-3 being the highest level and comprises of 11 girls who are preparing for the grade-5 examination. ------------------------------------------------------- Chapter volunteer Q&A From Menon, Dilip: Hi Teesta, Thanks for the summary...(and I definitely did not intend to imply that it was an intended short notice :) I believe the key questions during the meeting were: - partner was not taking active interest in the project. Reasons we felt - if Asha-Sv pulls out, they were planning to close the school. There did not seem enough commitment to run this project. - Budget items...teacher sal increase. Can this be held back in some forms of bonuses in forms of retention of kids or kids success or some form. I personally think this sal is too high, and the raise does not warrant the project at this point. - SSA funds. I cannot understand why they would have difficulty in getting this esp since it is a published scheme, unless it is bureaucratic challenges! Maybe when you work with Neehar/Amit on the eval doc, you can look at the various govt schemes that they can pursue. - Training. I personally do not think it is a concern if the teachers have been already trained and esp since they are graduates. We can get a better assessment by looking at the progress of the kids probably. - One issue here that I see. When we started the project LSS was confident they would be able to encourage a lot more girls to attend, esp since they have a good community involvement. That does not seem to be happening, if kids are dropping out or new ones are not joining... - Second issue..It was projected that Harlalji would be the trainer and involved since he was involved in other educational projects. But that does not seem to be happening since he is busy with other activities. So we lose a trainer and educationalist. - However the positive part of your call was that Sumanji would be involved full-time and monitor the progress. Probably we should put part of the teachers sal increase towards Sumanji's sal so that there is a commitment to make her accountable. Having said all this...I think this project is doing reasonably well and there should not be a reason to raise red flag, except for the following factors: - Project partner needs to look for alternate funding sources. Even having Austin funding this project partly would be an alternative, esp if we are looking at cutting funds to all projects due to lower funds raised. We could look at networking with other Rajasthan based orgs in the Bay Area, while the partner looks at local community to undertake some components. - Budget. We have not allowed any increases in all projects due to the fund situation. So we need to convey this to the partner. I also think it is a good practice for chapter to have a quarterly call with all project partners. We had one with VARUN too last week in which the partner mentioned they would like to hear from the chapter and also update the whole chapter. From BHarti, Teesta: Dilip, (1) I believe we should be looking at the salary of teachers in light of the actual on-ground situation, specifically the fact that both the female teachers do live on school premises, away form their own homes, with the girl children [which is very important given the age group of the girls]. The teacher are putting in 24 hours a day with the girls and with my personal experience of working in the field I know that it is very hard to find teachers for residential schools. Also they have not asked for additional salary for Sumanji per-se. If your point is that a salary for Suman ji will generate a since of accountability, then its something that we can talk to them about but. However, I do not agree with the suggestion of compensating Suman ji (which is not an ask) instead of compensating the teachers more appropriately (something that they have explicitly asked for) (2) In my opinion teachers refresher training should be a continuous focus, and that is something that we in general have been sensitive to with all our projects. As we all are very well aware, teacher training goes both ways - it helps the quality of education and engagement of teachers with children, and also creates a sense of incentive for the teachers ad they get to learn and improve their skills. Budgetary constraints aside, there is tangible value of teacher training. (2.1) Also because they do not follow the regular pattern of teaching and are trying to make it more creative and activity based. As far as Harlalji is concerned he is not an educationist per say; he got trained at Digantar 7 years back, and although he attends some degree of training with some frequency, he has not practiced those skills that regularly. (3) As far as encouraging the girls to enroll in the school the project partners did not want to expand so early they first want to see the results of the girls who are going to give 5th grade exams this year. They do conduct regular meetings with the community and are trying to convince them to send their girls to school but as we all know these girls are from poor and backward classes of dalit community their parents are not aware of the importance of education it is a big challenge for the project to even retain these many girls in the school. That said, retention of 50 girls itself is a fairly decent achievement for this project at this point. (3.1) Some drop-off should be expected, and I think at the point of project being first proposed, the intent always was to support 50 girls. There were 68 girls initially and I believe they always expected some drop off (seasonal and otherwise). Again, to retain and keep motivated 50 girls should not be overlooked. Finally, I am in constant touch with the project, and if there is a desire for a call with chapter in general [irrespective of the frequency] then it certainly can be done; that's separate from the intent of this conversation/discussion though. Teesta From Menon, Dilip I strongly agree with sal raise for teachers. However the increment is high from 3K to 5K. Smaller grades of increment would be better, and can thus be done as per performance too. I also think there should be some way to hold Sumanji accountable...be it thro sal or eval; it is for you to decide as a steward based on your discussions. Chapter call...we should ideally have it, and it is NOT relevant to this discussion since it is not project specific...but more on the lines of everyone interested trying to get to know the ground-reality in various projects! Cheers, Dilip From Kumar, Ashish Just for sake of giving opinion :) I would totally agree with most of the gaps identified except about the teachers salary. IMO salary should be increased atleast close to what's asked because: - It's a 24hours involvement - It would take lot of courage and motivation for those female teachers to be there compared to a male counterpart. - Again, considering the community which is so conservative about women and their contribution in society, these teachers are at increased risk of societal resistance and that risk needs to be rewarded. Hope this makes sense. -Ashish