LITERACY CENTRES
The history and experiences of running literacy/adult education centres in India has been very uneven. The success stories are few. So when we initiated the programme we asked ourselves – why adopt this approach and what new elements could we introduce? Despite various limitations, the centre provides a regular space where women can meet. Women’s lives in most of rural India – and Lalitpur is no exception – are inextricably linked to agricultural cycles and wage employment opportunities, and determined by deeply-entrenched patriarchal and caste relations. Regular attendance, we were aware, would be a problem. But ultimately we felt that for a new programme the regular presence of a facilitator would help build the programme’s identity, and also a relationship with the community. We were also clear that the centre, while focussing on literacy and numeracy teaching and learning, would not be confined to these. Unlike many interventions which separate the roles of literacy teachers and grassroots mobilisers, we decided that the literacy facilitators (called ‘sahajani’) would play both these roles, thus ensuring that various issues came into the literacy space.
A glimpse of the centres
The centres run for five days a week for approximately three hours a day. The approach to running the centres is flexible in order to respond to the needs of adult women and multi-grade teaching is the norm. Basic literacy is taught through primers that link literacy with health issues. This year the facilitators have specifically addressed the needs of women and adolescent girls who have attained fairly high levels of literacy.
At the centres, women not only learn and strengthen their literacy skills but also have a space to seek information (for example about healthcare and other entitlements) and discuss problems. Facilitators hold weekly meetings with the women at which issues such as health, violence, caste, food security etc. are discussed. These are open meetings and all women are encouraged to attend. The initial teaching-learning phase is woven around a primer, a curriculum framework and teaching-learning materials that have been developed around generative themes, enabling a holistic exploration of health and gender issues.
The activities of the centres are monitored in different ways and using different approaches – facilitators maintain monthly progress records of each learner which become the basis for further planning; collective reviews using participatory approaches are held periodically; to track learning a survey of a sample of learners was also conducted, and more recently we have been experimenting with learners themselves recording what they feel they have learnt and would like to learn.
Demanding entitlements: Literacy, health and gender
We develop concrete strategies to link literacy with ongoing development efforts. For a couple of years now, facilitators and women have been monitoring the Midday Meal scheme – a national programme that provides a cooked meal to children in government primary schools. The Midday Meal scheme seeks to improve the nutritional standards of children, especially from poor backgrounds, as well as to improve school attendance and participation. Information on the scheme was also provided in Jani Patrika, the programme’s broadsheet, and discussed at the centre. Most villagers were unaware of the provisions of the scheme. But they were aware of the ground-level realities – of corruption, poor-quality food being served and discrimination against children from certain communities. When these issues were brought up in the classes, facilitators along with some women went to the government office and got the necessary information about the scheme. This information was written in very difficult and inaccessible language (as is often the case with official documents) and had to be simplified.
Form used by teachers & learners to monitor the midday meal scheme (click to enlarge)

A simple format with different indicators was developed so that the women could monitor the Midday Meal scheme themselves. Learners and facilitators recorded their observations during school visits in this format and these records were used to write petitions to government and school authorities. In many villages, the scheme started functioning properly after these interventions.

(The report will be made available online soon.)