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Pratham takes a giant step
Photo: S. Arneja.
The first lessons of life... children at Pratham's Read Delhi campaign.
PRATHAM, A non-governmental organisation working in the East Delhi area recently launched its "Read Delhi" campaign to promote literacy and education in the Capital. The event had fanfare and the excitement of young cricket hero Ashish Nehra present on the dais to cheer the children, but a noticeable element that distinguished this ceremony from others of the kind by well meaning social workers was the focus on the hundred-odd children in the audience. The speech-makers took care to speak to the children directly rather than speak about them or speak at them. In the dusty late afternoon on the grounds of a Muncipal Corporation of Delhi school, the children sat in circles drawing, practicing writing and reading with the help of the Barahkhadi chart developed by Pratham.
As the compere brought the gathering to order, she asked the children to give a big shout before getting down to the rest of the proceedings. They lustily complied with an indecipherable bellow and got back to their drawings and games. Afterwards, when Vinod Khanna, the founder of the Delhi branch of Pratham - it was originally founded in Mumbai - addressed the gathering, he told the children they were the real "heros and heroines" of the occasion and explained to them about the importance of people like industrialist Gautam Thapar whose sponsorship helps the NGO function and golfer Vijay Singh who has donated his golf tournament winnings to the cause of Read Delhi. Every so often the children were exhorted to raise their hands and shout out the slogan "Padho Dilli" - literally, "read, Delhi".
Pratham's proposal to get Delhi - and eventually India - to read is through an experimental accelerated reading skills programme that has been tried in a number of schools already and is said to be successful in helping working and underprivileged children or those out of the main school system to read within a span of a couple of months.
A key tool in this is the Barahkhadi chart which helps them to recognise words phonetically. Having found the process successful wherever it was tried in Maharashtra and North India, Pratham is now launching it across Delhi in an intensive summer school programme.
There was danger of a minor stampede as autograph seekers tried to get near Ashish Nehra. The small children were not so much the culprits in this case, as were the adults, some of whom seemed keen to be photographed with him. In the confusion, the balloons meant to be ceremonially released by the children along with the cricket icon were let off before time by the tiny tots. Oh well, dreams have a way of rushing before the head - and that's what powers them to reality.
ANJANA RAJAN
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