Project ‘Muskaan’ – Supporting Government Rural Primary Education System

JBF understands that the lack of education is a root cause of various social and economic problems and therefore, the foundation believes that education should be the primary area of intervention for empowering the communities. In this regard, Project Muskaan was introduced in 2007 to support Government initiatives in primary education. The project has been named ‘Muskaan’, as it aims to bring a smile on every child’s face. It’ primarily aims at improving the learning environment and the quality of education in the select schools so that students are motivated to attending school and ultimately cutting down the dropout rate. The project now reaches out to rural government primary schools in the vicinity of Jubilant Pharmova's manufacturing locations.

The project was initiated with a structured approach involving focused steps:

• Advocacy with the District Administration and Block Level Education Authority
• Sensitization of all important stakeholders including teachers and parents, training and workshops are conducted for Panchayati Raj Institution (PRI) members and the opinion leaders
• Implementation involving a series of steps including the restructuring of the School Development and Monitoring Committee (SDMC) admission drive, tracking left-outs, drop outs and attendance,  motivating the parents to send their wards to the school, various innovative schemes are taken up including recognition and rewards. For improving the school environment, cleanliness and plantation drives are taken up involving students, events like birthday celebrations, reading out important news, recognition of good work was done etc. Training for teachers are arranged at regular intervals and activity-based teaching modes are encouraged through interesting teaching aids to bring in a gradual improvement in the quality of teaching in the school.
• Sustainability – Community involvement and monitoring mechanism to track improvements would help towards long term sustenance of the initiative.

With an understanding that both learning environment and quality of education go hand-in-hand, the foundation has worked with the local communities and school authorities on improving the environment (infrastructure, maintenance, quality books, hygiene factors etc.) and quality (training of teachers, learning methods of children, and additional extracurricular activities). Since inception, JBF has been actively assisting to initiate a change in the overall scenario of education in rural government primary schools. In the second phase, however, having established and made progress in improving matters, the foundation has set a routine of monthly activities for the whole annual calendar year. This is an attempt to increase and improve the learning abilities of children in the government schools the foundation is working with.

The idea of the Muskaan activities is to take baby steps every month, to reach the bigger goal of bringing change in reading, writing, and speaking abilities of children. Most of these children in government schools in rural villages are faced with the challenge of proving their capabilities in these three areas (reading, writing, and speaking) and more than usual lose out with their counterparts in private schools in villages or cities. The inability hampers further their chances of making a decent yet significant improvement in their overall life. Coming from humble backgrounds makes it difficult for them further to take tuitions or extra help.

The ‘Muskaan Project’ and the idea of the monthly activities is a small step to fulfill the bigger goal of helping these children to gain confidence and better their ability to read, write and speak