Mundra

Tata Power, India’s largest integrated power Company, through Coastal Gujarat Power Ltd. (CGPL), announced the success of Shiksha Saarthi, a programme devised to promote quality education for children living in and around its operations. Shiksha Saarthi, launched in 2012 in partnership with Pratham, aims to improve the learning environment for children through better educational facilities and has reached to a total of 6809 children.

The focus of the Shiksha Saarthi program has been on improving learning achievements of children by innovative classroom transaction and introducing effective teaching learning materials. This programme targets children from Class I to Class V, and identifies children who are lagging behind the desired level of learning; an impediment that disables children perennially attaining comprehension, communication and computation skills.

Through Shiksha Saarthi, 176 Learning Camps has been conducted in 45 schools in the year 2014-15 wherein innovative teaching methods were adopted to enhance the basic competencies in reading and recognition of numbers in the children. Through Shiksha Saarthi a series of learning camps are held with the children wherein peer learning and learning-by-doing methods are adopted to help the children improve their performances in reading, writing and mathematical skills. The outcome of the learning camps were very encouraging; the baseline figures indicated that 13.37% children could read a paragraph – at the end of the learning camps (after 30 days) the percentage of children who could read a paragraph increased to 61% (shown in Chart-1) . Similarly children who could recognise number beyond two digits increased from 35% to 79% children after the learning camps (shown in chart 2).

In the first year, Shiksha Sarthi was implemented in 157 villages of Mandvi and Mundra blocks. However, in 2013-14 and 2014-15, the program strategy was revised to focus on improving the learning environment through the learning camps in government primary schools, working with the Government at the Block Level, and extensive training for the newly inducted teachers through the CAMaL (Combined Activities for Maximised Learning) approach.

Speaking on the initiative, Mr. K K Sharma, ED & CEO, CGPL, said, “Project Shiksha Sarathi is a unique initiative and we are happy that it has enhanced the educational competencies of students in Gujarat. Tata Power is committed to improving the quality of education across the country and works towards motivating the children to develop keen understanding of their favourite subjects. Our efforts are towards augmenting the current levels of experiential literacy amongst children across the country. In the past one year, we are happy to have reached to hundreds of children living around Mundra. Such education forums are a great boost to help children accomplish their dream of seeking knowledge.”

Commenting on the success of Shiksha Saarthi program Kasam Node, Principal, Salaya Group school, said “All activities of the Project Shiksha Saarthi are simple, easy and work very effectively despite the diversity. I have seen that, children also very happy and excited as the Shiksha Sarathi teams visits schools.” With effective learning, the skills imbibed by the children also becomes sustainable and provides a solid foundation for their future growth.

Apart from activities in the schools, the Shiksha Saarthi project also facilitates a wide array of activities to engage communities and the government for an overall development of the community. The project also spreads awareness about the importance of girl child education through various block level activities.