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STARTING PRATHAM IN AGRA
Ajay Sharma,
February 2004
Working with Pratham has been an exhilarating experience for me. I was associated with Pratham Jaipur Project for last one year as a Trainer-Monitor and later as Programme Head. Working in the slums of Jaipur gave me an insight into the problems of slum children. I have tried to utilize this experience when I was asked to start Pratham's programme in Agra.
On December 3rd, I went to Delhi to have a meeting with Dr. Rukmini Banerji, Pratham's North India Programme Head, to work out a strategy to start a new programme in Agra city. Initially, in the 1st Phase we planned to start work with about 500 to 600 children in the community. We were hoping to find 25 community volunteers (Balsakhis) who would work with out of school children as well as with in-school children who were academically weak. We decided to focus first on building basic reading skills of children.
I was introduced to two young volunteers of Pratham - Shabnam Saifi (from Delhi) and Preeti Nishad (of Allahabad). We were going to be the team that started work in Agra. I was also introduced to Mr. U.C. Chaturvedi who was currently working with Pratham in Delhi but originally belonged to Agra. Mr. Chaturvedi gave us some important contacts in Agra city and also introduced us to Dr. V. S. Pachahra, an important person of Agra. Dr. Pachahra gave us important tips, which were helpful to start the new programme.
 On December 4, we reached Agra city, an alien city to us. But we did not have to fend for ourselves, Dr. Pachahra had already booked two rooms in the youth hostel for us. Upon reaching Agra, the first thing which we did was to buy a city map. Now the next step was identification of slum areas of the city. We visited the office of "Agra Nagar Nigam" (Agra Municipal Corporation) to collect the list of slum areas and information of the city wards. Armed with all the information we sat down to identify slums which needed Pratham's intervention the most. We randomly surveyed some slums and decided on two. Both the slums 'Karwan Gali' and 'Telipara', were densely populated with a large number of out of school children, some of them were working. One was a Muslim dominated area, the other was primarily Hindu.
We did a door-to-door survey of these two slums to assess the actual need of our programme. During the survey we identified some young girls and women who were taking interest in our activities, to be the teachers of our classes. The survey was completed within one and half week of our arrival in Agra. Simultaneously, we also rented an office in the Sikandara area of the city.
Our next important task was to organize training for the newly selected teachers. A week long training programme started on the 25th of December. The freezing cold weather could not dampen the spirit of the trainee teachers. At the end of the week all the trainees were bubbling with enthusiasm, to start teaching and were firm in their resolve to make every child in their neighbourhood start reading soon!!
 On January 1st Pratham Agra started 25 units, with 25 children in each class. Most of the children enrolled were either out of school or had poor reading ability. A strange problem cropped up, Telipara a predominantly Muslim neighbourhood could not provide us with sufficient teachers to teach in the area and the Hindu teachers were reluctant to enter Telipara to teach. To solve this problem we met the senior members of both the communities, and it was decided that the Muslim children would come to Karwan Gali for the classes. A strange but pleasant consequence of this decision has been that of some Muslim children actually attend classes in Hindu temples; and this has not even elicited anything remotely similar to resentment from the two communities. We have been so touched by this unexpected turn of events and feel so happy to be fostering communal amity in Agra.
Most of the children have made a remarkable progress in reading in about a month. This is evident from the Pre Test and the Mid Test Results. The improvement is significant.
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Pre Test Results |
Mid Test Results |
| Reading Level |
No. of Children |
% |
No. of Children |
% |
| Story |
0 |
0 |
55 |
9 |
| Para |
8 |
1 |
61 |
10 |
| Word |
23 |
4 |
107 |
17 |
| Letter |
191 |
31 |
240 |
38 |
| Nothing |
403 |
64 |
162 |
26 |
(Pre Test held on 1st January, 2004; Post Test held on 15th February, 2004)
This has made us more confident of achieving our goals rapidly because of the community support we have received so far, together with the active participation of the children and the efforts made by the teachers.
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