Last month, I had the opportunity to utilize a Fellowship grant to travel to Pune to conduct cross-organizational field visits and witness different approaches to urban education. My current project to establish UTCs (Urban Transition Centers) in Delhi addresses the educational difficulties facing migrant children, so learning from other projects doing similar work was highly necessary. While I have also conducted similar visits in Delhi, this grant provided a unique opportunity to witness the similar and different circumstances in a smaller, rapidly growing city like Pune. This added perspective strengthens my understanding of the variety of interventional strategies in this field and adds to the institutional knowledge required to effectively establish UTCs in the future.
After contacting multiple organizations in the city, I connected with the leadership at Akanksha Foundation and Doorstep School Foundation (DSSF), two Pune-based educationally focused organizations. DSSF works to bridge educational gaps for migrant and dropout children, focusing its work on urban slum communities. Akanksha Foundation also works with underprivileged children and focuses its resources and government partnerships to run dozens of English-medium schools in Pune and Mumbai. Even though the scope of the two organizations are quite different, the varied approaches provided important insight into solving different but related issues.
My trip to Pune was an incredible success, and I learned a ton from the field visits with both organizations. The staff who helped organize my visits were invaluable and an example of the overwhelming friendliness and willingness to support others I have encountered working in the NGO sector. Despite the many moving parts of these visits feeling uncertain at times, things often fell into place, creating exciting and unique experiences. Over three full days of field visits, I had fruitful conversations with program facilitators, program beneficiaries, and the NGO leadership.
Although I could not have done this project without the financial resources of the Fellowship grant, I am proud of my ability to ideate, organize, and execute this trip from the ground up. One of this year’s major personal accomplishments has been learning to self-direct and manage effectively. By understanding what I need to achieve, the knowledge I lack to achieve it, and where/how to access it, I have become far more self-reliant and capable in this position. The success of this trip exemplifies my personal progress, and I’m excited to share the specifics of what I learned during this trip in this blog post.
Doorstep School Foundation Visits
Day 1: School on Wheels and Construction Site School
On the first day of my site visit, I met with two DSSF initiatives targeting different types of migrant students. The first visit was to the School-on-Wheels project, which brings educational centers directly to slum communities through converted school buses. These migrant communities are transient within Pune, live in non-dense slums, and the children are mostly never enrolled or dropout students. Working with this demographic creates unique challenges, including low interest in education and residence impermanence. Both of these issues are addressed through the mobile center model which brings academic opportunity directly to the children. This solves the problem of communities’ frequent relocation because the bus can easily follow migrant communities to new localities. By bringing services directly to students, participation is so convenient that few sit out.
With a fleet of nine buses that each visit four locations daily, the School-on-Wheels program serves 1,350+ students a week (9 buses, 4 locations, around 30-40 students per location). Each bus has STEM and language teaching learning materials (TLMs), a library, a television, and craft supplies. While physical space is limited, the gutted school buses are large enough for three batches of students. Additionally impressive is this program’s broad reach. Working with 36 communities, DSSF requires highly intimate local knowledge and insight regarding migrant whereabouts.
Due to the high program cost associated with bus procurement and maintenance, this format is not currently viable for UTCs. However, the visit provided valuable insight into programming geared to locally transient migrant communities. Even more valuable was the lunch I enjoyed with the School-on-Wheels teachers and the ride they gave me in the bus to my next site visit location.
After arriving at the location, I was given a hard hat and brought to the Construction Site School on the ground floor of a large-scale building project. Construction companies commonly use migrant labor and are required to provide employees with medical care, safety equipment, and basic housing. Although the center is temporary, given the size of the project, employees and their children will require the center’s service for multiple years. Under Sections (32) – (37) of The Building and Other Construction Workers’ (Regulation of Employment and Conditions of Service) Act, 1996, construction companies are also legally required to provide child care to employees’ children, making these centers a mutually beneficial and cost-effective model.
During my visit at the center I participated in programming, helped tutor students through Foundational Literacy and Numeracy (FLN) lessons, and observed teachers create a holistic childcare space. This was a dynamic learning environment, providing care to a wide age range and across many subject areas. After warm-up activities, a few of the students’ younger siblings were given blankets and allowed to nap while the older students participated in educational programming. By providing this supervision, older students can join the center instead of staying home as caretakers. This approach broadens the scope of impact of the center and highlights the potential of dynamic centers that gear their resources to the needs of the individual students they’re serving. The construction site model also exemplifies the importance of leveraging private-sector partnerships and utilizing unenforced legal policy to reach mutually beneficial arrangements.
Day 2: Community Learning Centers and DSSF Exhibition
On my second day with DSSF, I visited two Community Learning Centers (CLCs) which support school-going slum children to improve academically. CLCs provide two streams of academic programming, one for foundational language learning and the other supporting more advanced learners across many subjects. Between the two programs, CLCs act as community spaces for students to explore their interests, brush up on language skills, and relax with friends in a safe and educational environment. The first center I visited was a two-floor building in a slum, and the second center was located inside a nearby government school. The two centers were quite different; the school center created a more traditional academic setting, while the slum center was more of an informal study space. Although very different, the flexibility in program design and implementation was a key takeaway. Finding physical space inside dense slums is complicated, so utilizing empty school classrooms makes sense. Working directly with schools has added benefits such as streamlining record-keeping and being conveniently located, increasing student participation.
Through highly motivated teachers and volunteers, both centers have cultivated cultures that prioritize student learning and comprehensive academic support. This high commitment was evident through CLC’s focus on English language learning despite the teachers’ minimal English proficiency. Rather than aiming for a perfect English curriculum, DSSF provides teachers with the necessary TLMs to encourage students to continue their studies. This supportive culture was also shown through a CLC alum who remains active in the center as a student mentor and volunteer teacher. His continued involvement shows the effectiveness of the CLC and encourages us to emulate successful aspects. One such aspect is the center remaining active during non-program hours, allowing students to use the space to explore interests, catch up on missed homework, and bond with their peers. Besides having a different target demographic (CLCs are geared towards school-going children, while UTCs are geared towards dropout, irregularly attending, and never enrolled migrant students), the CLC model is similar to a UTC, making this an important framework to emulate.
After I visited the CLC, I returned to one of DSSF’s main offices to visit their annual week-long exhibition exploring different aspects of teacher skill building, program design, and community participation. This year’s conveniently timed and themed event explored the topic of parent engagement in student education. DSSF set up multiple rooms filled with games, activities, and techniques for parents to utilize in their homes to encourage children to continue thinking about their FLN lessons. These activities included labeling kitchen items, compiling household items to be sorted by first letter/sound, and incorporating FLN into games like connect-the-dots and tic-tac-toe. After being shown around the exhibit by a DSSF employee, I met with DSSF leadership to synthesize my field visits and learn more about their programming.
Day 3: Akanksha Foundation’s Late Anantrao Pawar Memorial English Medium School
On my third day, I visited the Late Anantrao Pawar Memorial English Medium School, an Akanksha Foundation school set up in coordination with the Pune Municipal Corporation. This is a model Akanksha Foundation uses in all of its schools; the city provides the ‘hardware,’ and Akanksha Foundation provides the ‘software.’ The building and its upkeep are publicly funded, while the school’s teachers, curriculum, and supplies come from the foundation.
When I arrived, four senior students greeted me as my tour guides for the day. They showed off their accomplishments as published writers and poets, journalists in the school paper, and leaders in the school’s student government. Akanksha’s SEL pedagogy and teaching style have cultivated a culture of confidence and pride in achievement, driving students to excel. Although Akanksha’s schools are far from current UTC capabilities, there was plenty to glean from their parent engagement strategies and SEL teaching methods.
Conclusion
My professional development grant was highly informative and has strengthened my understanding of education initiatives in urban areas. Through the experience of other organizations, I have taken strategies and methods I plan to implement into UTC pedagogy. Akanksha’s approach to SEL and parent engagement are innovative and highly transferable strategies while DSSF’s structural similarities provide important insight into implementation and execution.
Overall, the most important takeaway has been the opportunity to build relationships with the people making this work happen. It was a pleasure to meet with teachers, facilitators, and school leadership who exemplify the skills necessary for effective educational programming. It was exciting to meet program alumni who have returned to the centers as volunteers, whose commitment shows the impact and success of these programs. While working to expand a pilot program, such as UTCs, has its benefits, it’s inspiring to see success on such a large scale.
