Vidyam Dehi - A project to provide education to your own people in your own society

2009-01-20T15:50:00.001-08:00

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****APEAL*** : All, please do contribute your thoughts and experience on my below project for any economically underprivileged student of your own society and own people on co-sponsorship basis with no help of any charitable organisation and without 100% financial contribution.
*** NO DONATION, PLEASE HELP YOURSELF!! ***

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VIDYAM DEHI

GIVE ME KNOWLEDGE

A BOTTOM UP APPROACH FOR BETTER EDUCATION

Introduction:

Load Sharing = 50%(You) + 25%(Parents) + 25%(School)

The main purose is this project is - Upliftment of your native society with a sense of load sharing and reducing illiteracy in your country. This will provide an opportunity to the parents who are keen to give a quality education but are not self sufficient to bear all the cost. Given the partial financial and moral support they will fulfil their dream with keeping their self respect intact. I will try to keep it up to date with the incorporation of most accepted thoughts posted by you with your name on this blog.

"NOTHING COMES FREE" is the basic idea of this project. FREE things may be taken for granted by the receiver and ultimately may lead to failure of whole objective. The person who bears the cost know the value of it and tries to remain focussed to achieve the goal. This is why it has been proposed that cost is shared amongst sponsor, parents and school. By doing the everybody will strive for their success.

We all want to help and experience it's visible effect. Let big bodies like government , charitable organization work as they are. But that have been proven as top down approach. The effects are in general non-visible to us. While with this project you will be able to choose your society and for this work without any such organization's help. Since it is your society and your people therefore you will have more interest, responsibility, control and visibility of end results, the level of motivation ad satisfaction will be higher. At the same time though that is unwanted, but the bi-product of this noble cause is getting name, fame and goodwill for you and your family in your own society comes free. It will work as bottom - up approach because if at root level all the societies grow, the whole country will grow. It is our moral responsibility to contribute the development of our society and country to make our motherland fundamentally strong. So let's get it done.

Objective:

1. Provide assistance to those parents in under privileged society who want to facilitate their child with a better school level education and not just education.
2. Work in a bottom up approach to develop a society where load sharing proves to be a solution in getting a better education which in turn triggers a chain reaction of building a progressive society which finally yields an educated and wise Bharat full of fraternity.

Goal:

10% Success rate.

Key Players

Social Facilitator:
Pancahayat OR any recognized local body which has the direct involvement in the development of respective society. This has the role of filtration of the right candidate. Also it has the most crucial role in selection and continuation of the program. They will have even greater role in future as the program spreads. They will share a responsibility of monitoring the success of the program per candidate.

Parents:
Carries the biggest risk of discontinuation of their child education, in the case of any failure in the system.

School:
An entity which has direct effect on cost and management of the program. They will also have a shared responsibility of selecting the best amongst the filtered candidate.

Major Investor:
An individual with sufficient resource and willingness to come forward by the rule of agreed solution worked out amongst Social Facilitator, School management and himself. There is no constraint on the individual to get outside financial help but the sole responsibility of his agreed payment lies on to him.

Implementation Proposal.

Assumptions:

1. Major investor shares 50% and is local to the society.
2. Parents shares 25% of the school fee.
3. School exempts 25% fee. This exemption is sole on the basis of finacial status and not as per candidate's marit. Marit can be a secondary criteria.
4. The current average school fee is Rs.9600 per annum per candidate, excluding any other fees.
5. Expected fee hike per annum is 10%.
6. The drop out rate is 25%.
7. Social Facilitator ie. local monitoring body (eg, Panchayat) has full understanding of their society.

Terms and Conditions :
1. All statutory issues have to be resolved locally.
2. Every child will be sponsored for 5 years at minimum. 5 years Sponsorship applies to the students who are taking admission in 6th standard and ends in 10th standard.
If a student is direct family member of Social Facilitator he/she cannot be in the list of filtered or 3. selected candidate.
4. Fund flow will stop with the immediate effect for the affected candidates declared as dropped out and the involved groups at stake become free from any documented or undocumented obligation.
5. There does not lie any responsibility on any of the investor to continue after 5 years for a particular sponsored candidate.
6. In every two years 1 candidate is sponsored for 5 years.
7. The gross income of Major investor is more than Rs.2 Lakhs(Income Tax proof required).
8. In case extra sponsorship within the same year the Major investor income should exceed by one lakh per candidate.
9. Parent’s over all income is between Rs.15000 to Rs.30000.

Work out:
The pilot project to start in Villages and the Panchayat will act as Social Facilitator.

Once the agreement amongst Major Investor, School and Social Facilitator has been established, the search for the candidates will begin. The final selection has to be agreed between School management and Social Facilitator.

On selection, a formal agreement amongst Major Investor, Parents, School management has to be made in the presence of the Social facilitator. They will be deemed to accept the terms and conditions as laid out above.

Key factors of the agreement:

1. All will abide to provide continuous support for making it a success for 5 years.
2. The Major Investor will pay 50% of the total academic year fee except admission charges. The payments could be broken in monthly/ quarterly / half-yearly / yearly basis.
3. The school will pay 25% of the total academic year fee except admission charges. The payments could be broken in monthly/ quarterly / half-yearly / yearly basis.
4. Parents will pay 25% of the total academic year fee except admission charges. The payments could be broken in monthly/ quarterly / half-yearly / yearly basis.
5. Books and stationary will not be part of the agreement.
6. Any other expense will have to be borne by the parents.
7. At the beginning of every new academic year, it is the responsibility of the parent to support their child for the whole year.
8. Children on support must not be absent for more than 20 days without prior approval from the School authorities.

Benefits:

1. Quality education status will increase resulting in better assured life of the sponsored candidate and hence Social up-lifting
2. The Major Investor will get a chance of paying a fraction of his efforts back to the society from where he belongs to and achieve greater sense of moral satisfaction. This will result in the major investor getting the goodwill in his local society though this may not have been his/her objective.
3. Parents will have their self respect intact that they did whatever possible to support their child.
4. School will earn goodwill at the cost of running with a minimum or nil loss.
5. Social Facilitator will get more fund flow at no extra cost for their society and will make their name up after each success, while failure because of expense factor does not fall back to their name.
6. Children when grown up will have better education which will always help them in their life. At the same time they will have a better respect towards their parents and society.
7. Children with the help, in case one of them gets a good social and financial status in their life will again try to pay back making an unending chain of progress for the coming generations.
8. All of the above will ultimately achieve both the target objectives of this program.

Risks Involved

1. Panchayat/Local body being corrupt.
2. There is nobody directly involved in monitoring.
3. Parents back out.
4. Major Investor backs out.
5. School’s management backs out.
6. Student gets dropped out due to unforeseen scenario.

Risk Mitigation Plan

1. Panchayat/Local body being corrupt.
It will happen exceptionally as there is no direct monetary transaction happening through the Social Facilitator. Also these social facilitators will be elected / changed after a particular term, so the overall impact will be less. The restriction on selecting a candidate from their direct family members will also reduce this risk.
2. There is nobody directly involved in monitoring.
Social Facilitator will have a role in it therefore at the beginning, few controls can be established with the help of Social Facilitator and Major Investor’s self initiatives and follow-ups.
3. Parents back out.
In general the parents will try their best not to fail as it is directly linked with the future of their child. Also we believe that their support guarantees a kind of minimum environment that should be provided to the child. The provision for 1 year agreement gives a level of comfort that the child will continue at least for the whole academic year.
4. Major Investor backs out.
5 years formal contract and support for candidates from standard 6th to 10th ultimately gives a level of guarantee from their side. The solutions can be devised once the project kicks off by trail and error method.
5. School’s management backs out.
Solution to 4 applies to this as well. At the same time it is unlikely in this case because the school is a bigger body and it would not be such a big problem for them.
6. Student gets dropped out due to unforeseen scenario.
Trial and error method will hopefully fix this issue as well.

Tamso ma jyotir gamaya

Vidyam Dehi - A project to provide education to your own people in your own society