Learning Initiatives for India (LIFI)

150 million children (one in three) are pushed out of the education system in India, denying them access to basic rights. The major barriers children face just to be in school are poverty, child labour, disabilities, civil strife, lack of infrastructure, reverse migration, harmful gender norms, and discrimination. There is a huge gap in the awareness among marginalised communities and implementation of Government policies meant to ensure that children irrespective of their socio-economic backgrounds, caste, genders and abilities get access to equal educational opportunities. COVID -19 has added to the inequity as nationally there is a 7% dip in the learning levels of children posing serious threat to their educational continuity. LIFI has a three-way focus to solve the above problem: 1. Access to Education: The focus here is to bridge the learning gap of children who are out of the education system or at risk of dropout and prepare them to be a part of the formal educational pathways (regular schools, open schools, vocational training institutes). This is done through teaching Hindi, Math, and English to the children in community centres or Government schools. The curriculum and pedagogy is especially designed to suit the pace of children and they get a hands-on experience of the topics being taught. The classes are held 5 days a week and are a mix of academic and extracurricular sessions. 2. Mainstreaming the children who are out of the education system or at risk to dropout: The focus here is to bring back the children in the formal educational pathways available to them as per their interests. This involves liasoning with the government schools, updating the documents required for admissions, encouraging the parents to trust in the process of formal education and involving the community in becoming the champions to drive the enrolment of children in the educational pathways. 3. Retention of children: The focus here is to retain the children in their chosen educational pathways. This means that they should feel supported at their place of learning and see the positive outcomes of their decision to be back in formal education. This involves LIFI’s team training the teachers of government schools in effective pedagogy and curriculum and activating the SMC so the community shares ownership in the school’s success. The above-mentioned focus areas are achieved through a 2 years Fellowship programme ‘LeAD UR India Fellowship’. Local youth (Youth Teacher Leaders) are recruited as fellows and are trained and mentored to undertake the change process that LIFI has envisioned. The unique proposition of the Fellowship is that we onboard community-based NGOs who are willing to implement the Fellowship in their own communities. This is to build a collective of supporting ecosystems for children wherever they are in the country.