The Project Savitri Bai is a Free Educational Program Run by The Dalit Voice. We work with vulnerable slum communities in Ujjain, Madhya Pradesh, on issues of education, identity, violence, health and survival needs. Our primary focus is on the education of children unable to access mainstream schools. Other programs differ across slums, depending on the critical needs of the community and the capacities and resources within the organisation to address them.
The mainstream education system, including the government system, has failed to meet the needs of the poorest people in the country. This system further puts them at a disadvantage and creates inequality. Even in cities, the typical government school does not really provide ‘education’; ‘Education’ also comes in its ‘packaging’ and with its biased ‘contents’. When children don’t adjust to these, it is put forth that ‘poverty’ has pushed them out of schools, or the parents don’t want them to study, or they will never learn.
Project Savitri Bai’s goals are to provide opportunities for meaningful learning – an education that would enable children to determine the course of their lives and contribute to a better and equitable world, for themselves, their communities, and other deprived and exploited population groups. Our education programme goes beyond traditional classroom learning to help students overcome educational challenges as well as relate to the realities of their lives.
Most of the interventions in education are focused on very vulnerable areas (identified by those areas where the majority of the children, if not all, are out of schools; these areas overall, with tribal pockets in a larger basti). So the focus here is on facilitating children’s studies in an interesting and meaningful way for them, while taking them through the formal school certificate examinations. Our ‘education’ work is operationalised through different forums. We find that early childhood education activities and support in senior classes are necessary along with elementary schooling, as these children are the very first generation learners of their close-knit communities.
It is only through the back-up support of various forms that children and parents of Adivasi and Dalit families can fulfil their aspirations of formal education, since the system works more to push them out than keep them on course. The conditions in families in terms of their cultural norms, as well as poverty, also imply that for a child to finish schooling, it is a big change at every stage of life.
