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‘Literacy Plus’ off to a start in Bangalore

Bangalore: “Literacy Plus,” a Rotary integrated literacy project, began the first phase of its operations on Saturday. It is a joint project of the Rotary Bangalore Down Town, Rotary Bangalore High Grounds, Rotary Bangalore South Parade, Rotary Bangalore West and Rotary Bangalore Vijayapura, with their international partner Rotary Club of Lancaster, California, USA.

This project comes under the 3-H grant which stands for Health, Hunger and Humanity.

Srikanth Chitrapathy, former district governor of Rotary Club, Bangalore West, said, “We have got $200,000 worth funds from all these clubs and the Rotary foundation too, which will help us provide better education to children. We will use the funds to better infrastructure and provide educational and sports materials to 31 government schools, of which 16 are from Bangalore and 15 from Devanahalli.” The project will be implemented in two phases. Under the first phase, desks, chairs, storage cabinets, playground equipment, science laboratory equipment, sports equipment, educational material and many other items will be given.

Government school teachers will also be trained under the project. The training method employed is called Concentrated Language Encounter (CLE), which was first developed in Australia. This method enables people to learn a language in a short span of time. As many as 100 teachers will be trained in English. Madhura Chitrapathy, director of the project, said, “We are using this method as a multiplier effect. We want these teachers, whom we train, to teach other teachers as well.” The training programme will be for seven days along with workshops for both parents and teachers.

The second phase will involve construction of Rotary Comfort Stations (toilet blocks) in all these schools, especially in girls’ schools. Ms. Chitrapathy said, “One of the main reasons children drop out from schools is because the facilities are not good or they are absent. Adolescent girls especially drop out because of lack of toilet facilities. We want to prevent this.”

Minister for Law and Parliamentary Affairs Suresh Kumar; R.K. Chetty of the Rotary Club of Lancaster and Kumar G. Naik, Commissioner of Public Instruction were present.

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