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Learning Center – Jeevan Shiksha PahelIn the centre, we work with children who have been considered ‘difficult’ to mainstream. They could be typically seen as ‘slum’ children or ‘rag-picking’ children or children ‘working’ at home and who would otherwise not have been schools and have rejected the government school system or vice versa. They are in the age group of 6 to 18 years.
For us, they are children for whom we need to continuously explore and understand what they want and need to be learning and what is useful for them, while we are also trying to prepare them for striving in the mainstream world. However, the school option need not be reinforcing the mainstream.
The centre is a 5 hour school for these children. It is a place where children learn literacy skills and academic concepts and pursue further studies in a curriculum that is closely emergent and linked to their lives. There are new concepts and information that are consciously introduced to the class, but in a way that the children are able to comprehend it.
The children study in groups, sub-groups and individually, learning at their different paces and styles and with their different responses. While some would like to use artificial currency for counting, another child works through her mind, and the third is sitting outside and doing her worksheet with stones. They write and draw about their lives at home, at work, and what they see around them, with questions provoking them to think and give their own answers. Different activities of craft, stitching and are interspersed with the study routine on a regular basis.
The purpose and the program of the learning centre is fulfilled through different logistic options which are convenient to the children. About 200 children from 6 slums come to study in one centralized place. There is another group of 100 children who study in basti based learning centres in 3 bastis. And also about 130 children who are very irregular in our centres because of their work pressures and we propose to take them through residential study camps. One such 40 day camp was held in April-May 2009.
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