Annual Report

Year 2015-2016,

Asha Darshan Trust, Tamulpur

Background:

I came to Tamulpur area in year 1998 and joined Tamulpur Anchalik Gramdan Sangh with an intention to help the women’s empowerment through awareness programme and SHG formation for their economic development. Whenever we had meetings for SHGin the villages I noticed many children came along with the womento participate the meetings. The incidence of children who ought to be in schools in schools hours coming to meeting instead shocked me. Time for meetings we fixed was between 10 a.m. 1 p.m. and in this period normally the women who are mainly housewives are free from household works. All children go to school in other places and the husband or other male working members also go to work outside. The women enjoy free time after the morning household chores- cooking, feeding, sending children to school and male adults to work outside.

I wanted to know why not going to school, we discussed. Women present in of the meeting informed me that there was no school nearby to go. Hence they either stay with their parents at home or go to Bhutan where the parents work to earn for family. Some women works in pebble factories, Children also go with them to help. Education for them is adistant dream only.

Some people in the community were conscious about the future benefits of education so they setup community run schools in the villages, appointed teacher, held the classes regularly. Teachers did not receive any payments for the job so many teachers discontinued the job.Educated youths of other area were also not ready to take up the responsibility. Nobody from other place was ready to come because of ransom demands, kidnappingsand killingsas the area was rife with terrorism in this period because of Bodoland Movement. Community wanted the schools functioning in the area so they collect contributionsto pay teachers salary. After 2/3 payments the poor parents were unable to continue the contributions. Therefore many teachers resigned the job and schools also closed downsoon after their resignation.

In many villages educated youths setup venture schoolswith a hope to getting government assistance in future. Governments had a system of recognizing community run venture schools for granting government assistance. But the process takes so many years that it makes the teachers tired so they ultimately opt discontinue the job to prevent more economic losses.

Population norm for setting up of a Mini-Anganwadi Centre in difficult areas is 150-300, and there were many such habitations eligible for the service. But none of the habitations had Anganwadi service centre for children. We decided to take 7habitations in the beginning to setup pre-primary schools in each. We are prepared to face another problem soon because there was no next level of education centreto take care of these once they completed the pre-primary level. As time passes we had upgraded the center. Government also came forward to take the responsibility of pre-primary level by opening ICDS centre. Therefore we give main importance on the primary level education only. Nagapur is an exceptional case where we continued till class X, the area did not have any high school facility within 15- 20 km.

Currently Asha Schools are active in following villages:

  1. Nagapur (Assamese medium)
  2. Nagapur (Bodo medium)
  3. Shimliguri
  4. No.1 Shantipur
  5. No.2 Shantipur
  6. Devinagar
  7. Satyanarayanpur
  8. Abhayapur
  9. Sonmuni

Whenever we find government ready to take the responsibility of children education in our operating area we hand over and move to new area to benefit deserving children. So far, Government selected 6 schools to regularize. Teachers wereregularly engaged with government for the purpose who finally could fully satisfy the officials for the selection.

Asha Darshan is now running 9 schools with 40 teachers. Recently 3 teachers out of the 40 have qualified TET Exams so they resigned to join government school. we are facing a new challengebecause of these.New recruitment already done, buteveryone cannot teach Science, Mathematics and Englishsubject. Qualified science teacher also do not want to come because of the temporary job nature and current salary structure.

Medium: We have two types of schools Bodo and Assamese medium. The number of Bodo mediumschools 2 and Assamese medium 5, total 7 schools.

Our operation area is located under BTC which is a tribal belt and Bodo is theirmain spoken language. Nagapur is such an area where no schools were accessible within a range from 15-20 kmdistance, there was no good road to travel the distance, a river runningbetween blocked transportations andthis was worst in rainy seasons. No hope of education and the fates of innocent children were uncertainty. Militancy outfits easily attract such children once they grown up. Education wasurgentneed for the children to shape them with good education from the very beginning of their early childhood and further to prevent them from antisocial activities.The 2 Bodo medium schools established are serving the purpose.

Educational Environment:

Theschools needimprovementto make them attractive where children like to come and enjoy teaching. School repairing, playground developed, store room construction for important materialsand school boundary construction is our priorities. We welcome support

Present schools are running in cuccha houses, no separate rooms for teacher, school boundary fencing are not permanent, made of bamboo only so in single rain it damage, no plantation in the school campus has been successful because of stray animal.

Books:

Asha Darshan Schools use the samenational curriculum as government doing. Earlier our schools received book supply from Assam government free of cost. But, this has been not easy from last 4/5 years because government changed policy. Only those having ‘DISECODE’ can receive the free supply as per new policy. Asha schools did not have DISECODE so we submit our request letter at BEEO office. We did not get positive response so we approached higher authority SDO (civil) for a solution. In his guidance village headman came and inspected the schools, submitted reports, but then also, the education office stood against us and disallowed supply. Then we met Education Minister, he gave us permission but block office did not supply. We met Deputy Commissioner and submit complaint letter, DCstarted action, discussion was in progress with council officials but in the meantime he wastransferred before the case settled. The registration remained half done.

Bribe:

Book collection was our top priority or else academic session will be delayed. But there was no hope of getting books from a corrupted system which was in power. We had information that storekeeper gives book for bribe. Since our anticorruption stand failed here we choose innocent children’s future. We bribed under compulsion to get books for the students. This is how we get book every year.

School Recognition:

Also official recognition the schools to pay Rs. 2.5 to 3 lakh as bribe. Nagapur and Satyanarayanpur LP schools paid these amounts to get DISECODE. This is how education system works. A real picture of remote poor villages.

School repairing:

We took 4 schools to repair this year, the work is in progress. Davinagar school committee decided to meet local MLA for his help. As decided, delegates went to the MLA and submitted application for his assistance of cement or sand gravel whatever he likes. He refused to give any grant with his comment ‘Remove the Asha Darshan sign board from school, we will take care’. Also, in his previous term he did not sanction any grant when he was in power, then he was education department in-charge. People doubts his intention, neither he sanctioned a grant to construct a school here nor allowed others to come.

Management:

Our field staff regularly visits the schools, 2/3 days per week; parents also visit the school and monitor the improvement of their children.

Monthly SMC meeting are held regularly. Management issues are discussed here thoroughly for action. Progress of students–boys and girls everywhere get mainimportance in the discussions.

Centre Meeting:

Teacher’s meetings are held ina rotation base at the schools, thereby every teacher are able to see the progress of other schools by herself or himself.

Monthly Meeting of teachers:

The meeting is held at Asha Darshan Office, last Sunday of each month is fixed for the meeting. Progress of all schools is reviewed here and post-training followup of the teachers is done. Opportunities and challenges also discussed

Post-training follow up meeting: Asha Darshan organized a post training follow up meeting at Bogajuli center on 15 March, 2016 to review the teacher’s training already held at Kumarikata from 5th to 8th Dec, 2015. Experience of applying new teaching methods was discussed here. the post training review process was facilitated by Asha’s own staffs Rupali Boro, Bulu Rajbanshi and Chief functionary Biju Borbaruah. But before the organization acquired help to conduct teacher’s training from outside resource persons help,

Main topics discussed here are: aim of education, educational environment, friendly relationships between student and teacher, career guidance for the future and special care for slow learners. Teacher demonstrated how they handle slow learners and make TLM with locally available materials.

Educational exposure trip

Date: 3rd March, 2016

Participants: Two-hundred sixteen participants visited Tezpur a most popular, romantic and historical place of Assam. Among them there were 190 students of class VII to X, 13 teachers and 13 staff of Asha Darshan Trust.

Objectives:

  1. Enjoying a day away from the classroom
  2. Giving the students a chance to build closer bonds with their classmates
  3. Experience new environments
  4. Making most memorable moment of student career

Places visited in the day:

Koliabhumura Bridge- the longest RCC Bridge in Assam, Agnigarh a popular and romantic site, Cole Park-a public entertainment place and Bhairavi Temple.

Summary of the visit:

The participants travelled in 5 buses to Sonitpur. Their first visiting place was Kaliya Bhumura RCC Bridge over Brahmaputra River. Then they visited the famous Agnigarh (hillock) the site of the fortress which was built by Banasura to keep his daughter Usha in isolation. The pleasant view of Brahmaputra River nearby the hillock and on the other side the Kaziranga national park was very attractive. After the Agnigarh visit the participants travelled to another popular holy place called Bhairavi Temple. Everyone prayed there with great devotion and completed prayer prasaad grahan. Team members decided to take light food at the temple as the day’s meal. After the meal taken, the team came to the Cole Park for entertainments. Towards the afternoon the team returns for home. Students had lot of fun on the return journey telling story, singing, sharing food, making friendship with students of other school etc.

Children remember this event as most memorable day in their student’s career.

Fund utilization:

All the programmes implemented other than MDM as per budget sanctioned. The time was very short for MDM service; this year we got 4 months only to serve food in schools. There was a delay in fund receipt. We procured some extra rations for the stock so we were able to serve for the next two months in April and May also from the same stock.

We always try not to use fund for undeserving purpose. We give main importance on the basic purpose of the programme for which the fund was sanctioned. When we find there is fund unspent, we decide to use for school development or to create more space for students.

This year a small amount was saved from mid day meal programme we used in school repairing.

Requirements:

  1. School construction:shortage of room for the classes has been a longstanding problem in the schools here, also all the schools are cuccha house. If 2/3 schools are taken for construction with RCC each year all the schools will be pucca housein a couple of year, school environment will be better, education will begood where every student can enjoy learning.
  2. Separate toilets for boys and girls: Each school facing the same problem, we have not been able to provide separate toilets for boys and girls because water supply facility is not available all around our schools area. Families get water from ring well only, number of ring well is also not sufficient to meet the water requirement of families.
  3. Ring well construction: We feel an urgent need to construct the school’s own ring well for drinking water and to use for other purpose.
  4. Boundary wall construction: Schoolsare not safe from stray animals. Each year all schools plant many important plans-fruits, flower and medicinal shrubs. Community makes bamboo fencing to protect them, it works for temporarily some months but once rain comes all fencing damage and nothing left from animals in the campus.Permanent wall construction is important to protect the school’s garden.
  5. Teacher’s salary: Teachers are the back bone of the schools who serve as second parents of the students. Sometimes they use own resource to help children as and when need. Teachers giveextra time to fulfill examination targets. They work in an inconvenient environment in rural area to make the poor children rich and famous while they remain poor and unrecognized. Asha for Education should not let more teachers leave the schools because of low salary. Everything is costlier than before in markets. Current salary they receive is not sufficient to meet the basic needs; neither have they got time to supplement family’s income by doing extra jobs. The economic condition of the teachers is not in a good position. All teachers have family. Experience of the teachers is increasing with age. They truly deserve salary increment.Their expectation is between Rs. 8000-10000 per month.
  6. Staff salary: Need to consider increment.

OTHER ACTIVITIES:

Cutting and embroidery training is an important ongoing activity of Asha Darshan, its main focus is to train women & girls on employable skills locally suitable. This important because many girls whoever went outside for job are insecure, some are not been able to come back home, new incidences of rescuing women and girls at nearby railway station alarming the area.

Asha Darshan organized the cutting and embroidery training for a month this year, interested 21 girls were trained on the topic. Now they all are capable of making ladies dresses. They want to run tailoring center individually, need support from outside.

Here is a possibility to getting dressmaking orders from SSB, Army, students of schools, colleges and others. Quality product is a main issue which the centre will need to guarantee its customers. Therefore, the centre needs help of good fashion-designer and professional tailors. Require support.

Weaving training cum production:The Handloom isa traditional industry of Assam.Womendo the activity not just for keeping a tradition alive but also they love this cultural traditional occupation. This is a suitable livelihood option and they love, and therefore, Asha Darshan accepteditfor their economic empowerment.

Recently the trust organized weavingtraining on the designs on Jakarta machine. 40 members from two SHGsreceived the training. They are working on loom to produce Gamosa, Aronai and Tongalifor sales. Asha Darshan have been helping the weavers with supply of quality yarn at a low cost .

Sales outlet: the handloom product collected from the weavers to sell in market. There is sales outlet at Tamulpur run by Asha Darshan .

Plan for the next year: we in Asha Darshan feel a need to improve the income level of the weavers. Therefore we want to give more importance on the handloom sector. There have a need to modify the designs of traditional handloom productand combine both traditional with modern designs to cope up with the latest market demands, improve market linkage to capture national and international markets, give equal importance on producing gift items, quality product and organize special training on yarn dyeing as per need.

Swaccha Bharat Abhiyan: Like every year, the trust organized Safai Abhiyan this year also on 2nd October in its operational area. Students of Asha Schools cleaned school campuses, Asha Darshan cleaned local market place at Tamulpur and the offices with the help of PHED.

Plantation Drive on world environment day:

Eye operation: Non availability of smokeless chulha in the area is one of the main reasons why most families still use firewood for cooking and heating purpose. High amount of smoke emitting from the chulhas creates unhealthy environment which causes eyesight trouble and lungs problems. These can make working members either blind or ill. Once the main member is unable to work the families’ income level will down beyond to the poverty line resulting worst impact on women and children.