The Small School Initiative

Think back to the last time you drove through rural India ... you would have, no doubt, seen children in uniforms walking or taking the public bus. Have you wondered where they are going? To school, yes. But, where are these schools? and more importantly, what do they look like? what is being taught there? Over the years, we have been to numerous villages, interacted with countless individuals and tried to answer these questions.

The Small School Initiative has been setup to answer these questions and is a response to a growing number of individuals who have expressed a deep desire to start schools in their own villages, usually where none exists.

The Initiative is an attempt to address issues linked to poor enrollment among 3 to 6 year old children and to the fact that larger number of dropouts amongst primary aged children happen in underserved communities.

While establishing any school in such areas is an important first step, Relief Foundation views this as an amazing opportunity to establish schools that develop, along with its teachers, curricula that are:

• relevant
• culturally sensitive
• regionally significant

Since we feel the quality of schools hinges chiefly on the quality of teacher education, we focus on two of our strengths:

• Our internal Teacher Development Program
• Our partnerships with the Chennai based, internationally recognized,Navadisha Montessori Institute (NMI)

Once these schools are established, Relief Foundation supports these small schools in creating efficient processes and provides continuous teacher development opportunities.



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Teacher Development | Creative Resource Center