The Hindu : NGO makes a difference to interior village

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Dec 09, 2003

Southern States

Southern States - Andhra Pradesh

NGO makes a difference to interior village

By K. Venkateshwarlu

Smile on their faces returns, with a school at their doorstep in Matendla village of Medak district.

MATENDLA (Medak dt.) Dec. 8. From an interior school-less backward village virtually cut off from the outside world with no road link and where the most educated person was a sixth grader, to a place boasting high quality school with 100 per cent enrolment and results, it is just the kind of makeover the villagers longed for and achieved it.

It was one of those dusty, faceless, condemned and most neglected hamlets, located four kilometres away from the better-known Jakkampur and Narayanraopet villages in Chinnakodur mandal. The only way of reaching it was by walk. After a long struggle it was upgraded to gram panchayat in 1995. But with no road and no Government or private school, there was no development. Children interested in going to school had to trek four kilometres to Narayanraopet. "The distance became a deterrent and our parents forced us into family occupation of herding cattle or farming," recalls K. Narayana, sarpanch, who could not study beyond seventh class.

For any committed NGO, wanting to make a mark in the field of education and rural development, the village full of poor illiterate Backward Classes, was the ideal challenge. The Rural Development Foundation (RDF), a non- profit public society started by eight individuals, four of them engineering graduates from IITs, picked up the gauntlet and set up the Matendla Rural School (MRS) in 1998.

With no big structure that could accommodate the school, the gram panchayat led by the sarpanch, decided to give away the one-room panchayat office and conduct its regular meetings in the bus stand in front of it. When the school began, classes were held in this room and under the trees. Gradually temporary structures were raised, all inside the panchayat office compound, to accommodate classes from nursery to VIII.

Initially it was a problem motivating parents and weaning children away from work, herding cattle or as farm hands. But as more and more children joined the school, it inspired others. The free uniform, free text and notebooks and mid-day meals worked wonders and the school achieved total enrolment. Five years now, the school has blossomed into a small but sound centre of learning for children, with some close monitoring by the board of directors of RDF, now headed by M. Gopalakrishna, former IAS officer. Before him, P. S. Rama Mohan Rao, Tamil Nadu Governor and K. R. Venugopal, former Secretary to the Prime Minister were the chairmen. The board's refrain has been simple,"We would like to prepare them for a performance on par, if not to surpass, their urban counterparts". The school turned out to be just that and more. It has become a focal point of all- round development. A road linking other villages has come up and there was better sanitation.

The strength of the school now is 258, 124 boys and 134 girls and a dedicated team of 19 teachers. "It is a school with a difference. We take personal care, use teaching aids, involve them in group activities, besides holding special classes for slow learners. All this with guidance from Lakshmi Chary, an authority on early childhood education," said G. Srinivas Reddy, principal of MRS. The result of the collective effort is there for all to see. The immediate impact was on the Government school started a few years ago. The first batch of all 11 students who took the seventh class board examination, last year passed in first division. "But for the school, I would have continued to herd sheep," said Mahesh, one of them.

Discipline is not confined to children but even the teachers, all of whom wear uniform. Both the former and the present sarpanch, who could not study beyond seventh, got their wards admitted in this school. There were other spinoffs too. The teachers joined in a family welfare campaign and the result was within five years, the admission to nursery has come down by half, with birth rate having come down.

The school, having stabilised, is now looking forward to shifting to a new spacious building, being constructed on a four-acre site, nearby. The RDF runs a much bigger school with a strength of 500 students at Kalleda, another backward village in Warangal district. Fifty per cent of the expenditure for running these schools come through contributions from India Literacy project (ILP) USA and India Rural Development Fund (IRDF), USA and the remaining is raised within the country through RDF resources and donations from philanthropists. At Kalleda, the RDF has expanded the activities to build water conservation pits and set up two bakery units both with support from CAPART, popularise non-pesticide usage, methods, vermi-composting, health camps and fair weather roads.

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