"Simply ensuring the children go back to school and creating an awareness of the outside world has brought in a remarkable change in the future of the next generations." -Annie George, BEDROC, Nagapattinam, Tamil Nadu, India
It is quite well known that the fishing communities
prefer their sons joining them in their fishing activities at an early age of
12. So, while the level of literacy, as measured by the indicator of knowing to
read and write, shows Nagapattinam at a very high level of more than 80%, we
also had a lot of drop- outs by the 7th std., which was not tracked anywhere.
After the Tsunami, a lot of NGOs who were closely involved with the
communities, started campaigns on resending children to schools. They also held
bridge classes and tuition centres. This has had a great impact on education
and today most children are in school till at least the 10th Standard.
Although this has also been supported through the
opening up of the external world through the TV, internet etc., the focused
attempt, in the course of two- three years, of the external players like the
NGOs, has made a vast difference in their outlook on education. This has opened
up more channels of development and today we have a lot of youngsters,
including girls, who have opted for service sectors like hotel management,
engineering, agriculture etc. largely due to this external influence.
No comments:
Post a Comment