Prayog

About PRAYOG

PRAYOG works in rural Bihar and extends its operations in Kuchaikote block of Gopalganj district. Had it been normal times, we would have done our normal activities – strengthening library and activities around a few select government schools, which we have been doing since 2017. However, in FY 2020-21, our focus was just to reach out to children with enough diverse books and engage them to read, in a community set-up.

Approaches adopted in response to COVID

The pandemic opened up a Pandora’s box – full of challenges. Keeping our challenges aside, if we look at it from the lens of children, especially the girl child – what must be happening to them, what socio-emotional difficulties children might be going through and are we doing enough? The entire world is working to mitigate the health and livelihood issues. But, what about education? What about children in rural areas, especially in a state like Bihar, where most of the children haven’t seen a government school for the past 6-8 months? How many households in rural Bihar will have a TV or an android mobile handset with the capacity to recharge for the costly internet packs – a bare necessity to continue with digital education? Is digital education the only way out? What exactly is the purpose of education? Is it not that the child is free to dream, for each and everything. Shouldn’t they be able to think or make critical decisions? Or, is it only the qualification?

Challenging times often also reveal opportunities. It was during such times that we decided to help the community through provision of basic sanitation kits. We also supported the government-school teachers in a different way. Our engagement with a controlled group of children was first initiated via a social media tool – sending stories through WhatsApp. That gradually took the shape of a community library in our intervention area in Kuchaikote block, Gopalganj district. While the community library has definitely brought in immediate changes in the lives of its member children, it has also helped us think and grow as a team.

We included women representation in our team and worked to ensure capacity building of our entire team through a partnership with Bookworm, Goa.

Plan for the next 3 years

While our focus has been around reading and using library as a medium, over the next three years, our focus would also be on foundational literacy and numeracy, curriculum, and pedagogy in schools, and pedagogical, curricular style of the foundational stage. Our work areas remain the same but a deep diving effort would be made to understand the nuances of education at foundational level and preparatory level structures.