Editor's note: New contributor Erica Dhawan joined our team in February 2009. Previously, she worked at Lehman Brothers and helped build a young professionals network for Acumen Fund. Erica has been traveling with me and will be writing about our experiences as well.
Meet Gordham, a longtime waiter at the well-known LMB restaurant in Jaipur, Rajasthan. His wife and two young children live in his hometown Kalilpura Papra, a rural village 6 hours away from Jaipur. Every 15 days, Gordham goes back to his hometown and spends 5 days with his family and makes sure the plants are watered on his farm. Kalilpura Papra is a village of 450 people and his 2 children currently go to a nearby Hindi medium private school where he pays 240 Rs per month per child. Gordham has decided to send his 2 children to an English medium school next year which is 20 kilometers from his village. The fees are 600 Rs per month per child, which more than doubles the education fees and does not include transportation. Gordham, who spoke Marwari and Hindi, wanted his children to be the first generation in his family to receive an English education. When Deepti asked Gordham if he had a computer, he said he did not and mentioned that the electricity stopped every 8 hours in the village. His family does own a TV, but no VCR.
Deepti then asked Gordham that if he did have a computer, would he be willing to buy an e-learning CD for his children to learn on the computer. Although Gordham didn’t have a computer he quickly responded that he would spend up to 1000 Rs per month on each of his children for their education. We exchanged contact information with Gordham and hope to visit his village.
Education is the average Indian family’s second largest expense after food. By meeting Gordham, we saw a parent’s willingness to invest in his children with the best resources available to him. We also observed how the lack of access to basic electricity and technology infrastructure may affect many children and families in Gordham’s hometown. Our conversation with Gordham continued to confirm that we can view parents as partners in identifying innovative ways to bring high quality education to small towns and rural areas.
by Erica Dhawan
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Hi Deepti,
ReplyDeleteI am a friend of Nina Henning. She interned with Acumen and I went to school with her at Michigan. We were discussing about how I want to work in the education sector in India and that's how I landed on your blog.
I have a couple of interesting people/organizations that you might be interested.
First is Dream School Foundation. This is a organization that (http://www.dsfindia.org/). Their goal is to improve the quality of education in government schools in India. They work with the government schools in Karnataka and partner with private entities. Its an ever evolving, really lean, results oriented organization thats trying to tackle the crazy complicated problem that is 'how to make government schools work as they should'. I used to lead a team trying to transform a particular school in Bangalore and was impressed with how entrepreneurial (scrappy, do whatever it takes") and result oriented (measure everything) they were. I think you would like them. Maitreyee, who founded DSF is a good friend and will be a useful contact if you ever wanted to talk to them.
Another organization that I briefly interacted with is ILID (http://ilid.org). ILID actually lists Acumen as one of their clients though I am not sure what the association is. ILID used to have a program called Pygmalion which was trying to bring computer aided education to government schools. I remember that they had some kind of curriculum in line with the school syllabus and Dream school was executing it in some schools in and around Bangalore. Dr. Jayaram who is the founder/director of ILID should be a useful contact for you.
I wish you good luck on your venture. My parents are first generation college graduates who made it against all odds. My mother is a high school teacher in a government aided school where half the student population is tribal. I understand how important and how difficult your work is.
Good luck.
Swapnil