Community Educational Centre Society (CECS)

Supported by: Wipro Cares

About CECS

Community Educational Center Society (CECS) is an organization that mostly emphasized working with marginalized children at the very grassroots level. The primary focus of the organization is to bring lasting changes and to bring complete transformation in the lives of those children. CECS, in line with such intentions, works in partnership with like-minded organizations and well-wishers for better sensitization and effective implementation of the task. As part of its mission, CECS is implementing and monitoring 15 Informal Education for Marginalized Children (IEMC) Centers, which are supported by WIPRO Cares.

Though the sudden lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic has thrust schools and teachers of both public and private institutions into an emergency remote teaching mode, it has become increasingly clear that the pandemic situation is likely to force the coming academic year to continue online. Now, therefore, it is essential to review some of the recent experiences of emergency remote teaching methods and derive some useful lessons.

This closure of schools may protect the schoolchildren from coronavirus but the impact on them is detrimental. Children are missing their daily interactions with their schoolmates and teachers, and it will be long before they go back to school. Private schools, where children of relatively well-off sections go, were quick to arrange for online classes with equally supportive parents. However, this is not the case with the marginalized sections.

Virtual learning/teaching has its benefits for the privileged but the underprivileged children get further marginalized. Apart from suffering from the loss of a proper source of income, parents of such children have to struggle to provide them with smartphones and laptops, which are beyond their reach even in ‘normal’ times. Under such circumstances, hoping for the marginalized children to attend online classes regularly is problematic.

Therefore, Educational Volunteers are busy working from home, preparing effective study material for their students so that there is no halt in the teaching-learning process. They are working hard and are available for students at all times of the day in order to reduce the hardships and disruptions caused to the students across the state now during this hour.

Covid Response

Since the outbreak of coronavirus, there has been a significant effect on children’s learning. It has remained a daunting challenge for the educational volunteers to start teaching in the Center. Most of the private and government schools take classes online whereas educational volunteers took the initiative of making door-to-door visits to our students’ houses. In a day, they spent at least an hour in each house with a number of 3-4 students.

Some of the educational volunteers conduct classes in the Center itself with 5 students according to their roll number, after maintaining proper COVID-19 precautionary measures. The school was functioning partially on voluntary class basis with the proper guidance of teachers, following COVID-19 protocol and guidelines, with the time consumption of not more than 90 minutes in teaching – learning process during class hours.

It was not an easy task for the EVs to take classes as most of the students did not wear masks and social distancing was not appreciated in the beginning of the pandemic. EVs tried their best to teach them the importance of wearing masks, cleanliness, washing hands, and social distancing. This pandemic has taught and enforced many good habits in our lives. Although COVID-19 affects our daily lives, we learn something that we can value for the rest of our lives.

The teachers provided special guidance for our mainstreamed students by keeping in touch with the teachers of government schools. The students enroll there to ensure that they do not miss any information, assignment or notes, or the Aid Reliefs received from the schools. During the lockdown period, the students personally approached the teachers, seeking guidance in their notes preparation, which shows the zeal for learning in them. The mainstreamed students were also invited to our school and monitored in their notes, assignment, and syllabus assessment.

Locations

The organization works primarily in Nagaland. The following are the locations of the learning centers supported by Wipro Cares: Ura Villa, East Block, Nagagaon, Chumukedima, Bamunphukri, Zani, Phom Colony, Sun Rise, North Block, Grace Colony, Imkongsenden, Rio Colony, New Bamunphukri, Toluvi, Eralibill

Plan for next 1-3 Years

CECS will continue to identify and admit vulnerable and marginalized children including dropouts, never enrolled and child laborers into informal education through Informal Education for Marginalized Children (IEMC) Centers and mainstream them into formal schools. Besides meeting their educational needs, the organization, through these project deliverables, will ensure the overall growth and development of children and keep them away from socially deviant behaviors and vulnerable situations, in addition to fulfilling their basic requirements for food, nutrition, and health. IEMC Centers will cater to all kinds of vulnerable children such as beggars, street and working children, rag pickers, small vendors, street performers, orphaned, deserted, trafficked and run-away children, children of migrant population, school dropouts etc.

IEMC Centers will identify those children who are working in industries, factories or in any other occupation, school dropouts etc.  IEMC Staff will visit those places where children are involved in work and where there is a high rate of school dropouts in the age group of 6-14 years. The staff will interact with the children and the parents/family members to withdraw these children from their vulnerable situations and admit them to IEMC Centers in order to let them pursue their education. Once these children are admitted into IEMC Centers, they will be provided basic education with nutritional support and Health Care Services to prepare them to be mainstreamed into formal schools. The IEMC students will be assessed thoroughly on a monthly basis to keep a track of their progress and performance; based on which, they will be admitted into formal schools in the following academic year.