Pratham – Empowering Women to Build a Nation

 “When you educate a man you educate an individual; when you educate a woman you educate a whole family.”

 Boban Paul writes about Pratham and its female volunteers and the larger impact of our Read India Campaign

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Many of us are aware of Pratham’s efforts to improve the learning level of children at the primary school level. Pratham does this through the Read India II campaign, launched in 2010 and expected to bring about lasting results by the end of financial year 2013. Pratham plans to do this through the Block Excellence Program (BEP) wherein the effort is to create a demonstration model in a block (comprising of 100 villages) with the hope that the government will, upon showing clear evidence of success, adopt and scale up the program. In each village of a block, volunteers are recruited, who teach children at the primary school level. These volunteers are trained in Pratham’s methodology, both on the job and off it.

On a recent trip to Assam, where I noticed that about 90% of the volunteers I met were girls, a thought crept into my mind about the larger impact of our program. Robert Morrison Maciver, a sociologist, once said, “When you educate a man you educate an individual; when you educate a woman you educate a whole family.” This is very true for, in most families it is the mother finds time and takes the initiative to look after the education of her child. (In Assam, there was a clear case of mothers actually taking out time regularly to visit school and see how their child’s education was progressing)

Now if one takes stock of the female-male ratio, at an all-India level, for volunteers teaching Pratham classes, one will find the scales dip on the side of females. This is a very positive sign of the things to come in the future because having been trained by Pratham, we believe there is a certain sense of motivation and passion that these volunteers would carry throughout their lifetimes, towards education and specifically towards the concept of learning level outcomes. This will surely benefit the future generations that these volunteers will be in touch with – their own children as well as children in the neighborhood and larger family. On a larger scale this translates to a large majority of our nation - hence, the title, “Pratham – empowering women to build a nation”.