Why I work at Makkala Jagriti Hi, my name is Nikhil Vasuki, and I manage communications at Makkala Jagriti. This account is a story of how Makkala Jagriti’s story and my story met. The first 15 years of my career have been widely varied. My ties with the corporate world began in finance, moving on to the world of defence contracting. This exposed me to so much geography: Arabia, Europe, the Americas, and Central Asia. When I moved to India in 2014, I started my stint in news media. In the field, I got a more nuanced understanding of the socio-economic situation of the people of India, especially the people of Karnataka. As much as administrations are doing their best to bridge the gap between the rural and the urban, it does take time. To identify areas that need extra support needs many more boots on the ground than are currently available. One major area where I saw a large rural-urban disparity was education. From pre-school to tertiary education, there were stark differences in what children and youth were exposed to. With the fraction of rural children and youth who transitioned into an urban setting for further studies...
Online Learning With Makkala Jagriti During The Pandemic What Children, Parents and Teachers Thought The years 2020 and 2021 so far have been challenging beyond comprehension. This holds for everybody… having to combat an unprecedented worldwide occurrence calls for a special strain of resilience. At Makkala Jagriti, a challenge we have observed closer to home was one of uninterrupted learning. We’ve had to hit the ground running with measures to ensure no child was left behind, that no access to a physical school building does not mean no access to education. With tools such as WhatsApp and YouTube readily available to most of our children, we sent them daily lesson plans and activities to keep the learning engine running. However, not all children have access to electronic devices like smartphones. For these children, we sent learning kits that included workbooks and stationery. Additionally, teachers would call on the children and make sure they were on track with the material. But crucially, one group of stakeholders had to be well-equipped to ensure the children commit to the activities while at home: the parents. While we set out to do all this with specific objectives, it was important to understand what...
Ushering New Opportunities for Children in Child Care Institutions Dev (name changed) is a little boy of twelve from Koppal district in North Karnataka. Circumstances have been difficult for him. Coming from an unstable family, he spent his life as a rag-picker when Childline’s frontline team rescued him. He was brought to the Government Children Home for Boys in Koppal. Disheveled and unkempt for a long time, he took his time to adjust to the new place. The Government Children’s Home for Boys in Koppal, or Balakara Balamandira as it is called, is one of thousands of Child Care Institutions (CCIs) across the country that provide shelter to children in need of care and protection, like Dev. Children in need of care and protection are defined by the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015 as children who have been abandoned by their guardians, do not have a home of their own, are physically or mentally challenged with no one to look after them or are in a vulnerable situation like working in contravention of labour laws or living under potential threat of assaults from people around them. It is estimated that between three and five lakh children...
RALLYING TOGETHER – COMMUNITY SUPPORT DURING THE PANDEMIC We’ve been amid the COVID-19 pandemic and its effects for over 18 months now. It is rather hard to reminisce about life before then. So much has happened in these 500-odd days that they feel like a lingering dark and dreary cloud. It has been particularly hard on the socio-economically marginalised communities. Since the pandemic struck, Makkala Jagriti has been working to ensure 12,000+ children from these communities have access to uninterrupted learning during the pandemic through online and offline means – whether in urban or rural parts of Karnataka. You can read more about it here. Over the last year and a half, we have seen lockdowns and curfews have affected the livelihoods of our children’s families. Businesses have had to shut their doors indefinitely, leaving employees in a lurch. Among the worst affected have been daily wage labourers and those in the unorganised sector. Among the most significant problems faced has been that of food security. With the support of our donors from across the world, we at Makkala Jagriti decided to work within communities in areas with which we were familiar, identify families in need, and facilitate access...
Exploring Creativity When we think of the word creativity, our minds tend to gravitate towards forms of art and artistic pursuits. But if we were to break the word up and dwell on the word create, it is quite simply a conversion – conversion of thoughts, ideas, and ruminations into a reality that we can touch, feel, experience. We looked within ourselves at Makkala Jagriti and introspected about the various ways we are fostering creative development as part of the holistic development of children. We do this regularly to understand what works and what can be done better, with the ultimate goal of children unleashing the power of self-expression. We threw the question to our team during such an introspection: What does Creativity mean for you? Here’s what we heard: Rohit : For me, anything that one does with joyful energy and feeling is a creative pursuit. It does not always have to be something new and different. Therefore, creativity or creative thinking is one of the most critical dimensions of the holistic development of a child. It allows the child to constantly learn and discover and be a better version of himself/herself. I think we allow our children and...
Yuva Café: Brewing youth empowerment Anita* was looking for a place where she could learn some basic computer applications to help her get a job. Her friend Ravi* told her about a place which was offering a course that taught basic computer skills – free of cost! Jumping at the idea, Anita rode her scooter and parked by a building which had a board that said Yuva Café. “A rather odd name for a place where people learn about computers”, she thought. She went in, had a chat with the teachers there and began her lessons. Observing what was happening around her – deeper conversations between the students and teacher, lessons on how to speak English with greater effect, a small library covering a variety of subjects – she realised that Yuva Café wasn’t just a place to get some basic computer knowledge, there was a whole lot more! Now, the term Café evokes myriad settings. A place to get a quick coffee. A place to catch up with friends. A place to begin your startup. A place to read. A place to contemplate quietly. In the same manner, Yuva Café as a concept was set up to...
The ‘New Normal’ in Early Education – Learning During the Pandemic It’s 8 a.m. somewhere in the world. The breakfast plates have been put away, the computer screens are on and studded with little images of children, with the teacher somewhere in the mix. For the next few hours, the children listen intently to the teacher imparting the day’s lessons. This has become the reality for children across the world – a ‘new normal’ – staying away from school to prevent possible infection, and balancing that with continuous education. The challenge with striking this balance is closer to home, right here in India. Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) for children between the ages of three and six is a critical need. Numerous studies have shown that 90% of a child’s brain development is driven by early experiences before they reach the age of 5, setting the pace for development right through adulthood. The absence of ECCE can have a lasting negative impact, with consequences such as early discontinuation of formal education. The challenge for uninterrupted early childhood care and education lies in accessibility, and this is a challenge across rural, semi-urban and urban areas. The new normal which we...
Children and Art – A Journey Towards Self-Expression Reminiscing about our days at school, one memory that rings clear is of a class we would never miss, come rain or shine. A class in which we put away notebooks and pens, and pulled out large white sheets of paper, paints and brushes, and coloured pencils. The ART class. A class where we would feel free… but to an extent. Perhaps the journey in the world of still life, of scenic views, gave rise to an exploration into our creativity, but that was okay as long as we coloured within the lines we drew, use the right colour for the right object, and did not make mistakes – lest our work be judged without affirmation. This hereditary hesitation had to be transformed somewhere. Our concentration on the holistic development of the child led to us organising a workshop for our facilitators on the subject of Art as a Medium of Instruction. But… before our facilitators could guide children through art, they had to be students themselves. This came with the expectation to unpack past learnings and start anew. We’ll tell you how this happened. One of the tasks assigned to our...
