Pratham Mysore has set an ambitious goal to ensure that by the end of 2005, every
child in Mysore will be enrolled and attending the school. One of the strategies adopted by Pratham was to
organise a camp for the children from the slums and poor neighbourhoods. The 45-day camp is coming to a
close on May 30.
According to Pratham, the camp organised exclusively for government school children
hailing from the disadvantaged groups of the city was successful.
What is significant is that 152 centres had been opened for holding the camp here.
Over 3,000 children in the age of 6 to 14 years were covered, with a special focus on long absentees and drop-outs.
Chief Project Co-ordinator Sheshadri says the centres were run in 96 schools and 56
in-house locations like houses of teachers in slums. The 150 centres were spread over six zones - two in North and
one each in South, East, West and Central.
Innovative
“The activities of the camp were planned in a most innovative and unique
methodology to make learning lively and interesting. The entire curriculum is not text based to avoid
boredom. Instead each session is filled with lot of games, group interaction and a variety of events,” he explains.
The sessions included a series of short packages and workshops in the areas of
environment, bio-diversity, traffic rules, waste management, health and hygiene, civic responsibility, history of
leaders of Mysore, theatre, art etc.
“Demonstration of a series of science experiments with low cost materials was
arranged to foster management attitude among children and also make them to learn basic science concepts,”
he adds.
Special Package
He said a package was designed for fostering mental maths for basic arithmetic
skills through games. Kannada reading for those who cannot read through ‘Oodona Baa’ - Kannada Vachana
Karya Krama with pre-post test assessment was the highlight of the camp.
Special emphasis was given to help child develop survival skills under adverse
conditions. The subjects taught under these skills include health, nutrition, habits that cause health injuries etc.
This apart, specific training on development of special skills was imparted to children
which include preparation of paper bags using old newspapers and magazines to fight the use of plastics, besides
clay modelling and card making.
The entire programme was supported by ‘Sarva Shikshana Abhiyan’ of the Department
of Public Instruction and Larsen and Toubro.
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