Every child has the right to good education even in a country that has few outstanding facilities to serve the economically poor.
The Poveda Foundation, recently celebrated the graduation of its students into the final year of the 4 year program it runs. Started in September 2009, the foundation runs 2 after school support centres for children from Morwadi and Chinchwadgaon. The program begins with kids in class 7 and academically supports them till they pass the SSC. Each child must make a 15% academic increase in English, Math and Science, as against their baseline class 6 assessment, taken at the time of their recruitment.
The Annual Conferral celebrates just these victories. The kids had an average score of 33.8 and 52.35 percent in Science and Math at the start of the program and at the close of this year their average had increased to 64.5 and 61.6 percent respectively. While Kajal a student from the Morwadi centre made a 32% increase in her Math score since the last year, Komal, also from the Morwadi centre made a 27.6% increase in Science. Reshma from the Chinchwad gaon centre scored an average of 89.5% across Math and Science. The conferral is an opportunity not to recognise the toppers but to commend children who have made the highest improvement through their hard work and determination. As many as 24 certificates were awarded to children who made outstanding progress and this served as motivation to all the children to work really really hard in the next year.
This year, the centre kids made and presented through powerpoint presentations the special events they participated through the year. While Rio Tinto has been a huge help by providing the laptops for their computer education and sponsoring the costs of an entire trip for the kids to Goa, the students of Symbiosis helped the kids learn the computer.
Swati Kadam, the science and math teacher spoke on the year gone by and how she has experienced growth both in the kids and in herself.
Also present at the conferral were the children from the Poveda Kids Nursery, who performed various songs and skits that represented their learning through the year. The nursery, started two years ago serves two objectives namely, to create and run an excellent model in English preschool education that can be replicable in the slum communities, thus giving the underserved children access to good education from the start of school and to create a centre where both the poor and those who can afford a tuition fee are educated together, a model that is self sustaining and will contribute towards the organization.
Treza D’souza spoke on the methodology used in the nursery and how it stands out from its peers. She too shared how she has grown as a teacher in the year gone by.
The conferral was attended by the parents of the after school support centre and nursery kids, donors and well wishers of the Poveda Foundation.
Reeves Rodrigues, founder of Poveda and teacher, announced the prize winners and presented the rationale for the same. He invited both the children and the parents to greater responsibility in the next year and expressed his gratitude to the parents of Poveda Kids for choosing Poveda over the other nursery.
