Jai Wadia

The Foundation for Education and Development through its Doosra Dashak project is changing the lives of millions of adolescents in rural Rajasthan

Seventeen-year-old Maykalal was proving to be quite a handful for teachers at a 4-month residential training camp in his village in the Abu Road block
of Sirohi district in Rajasthan. In a regular school, teachers would have given up on him, as he was unruly and disrupted the class. However, at this special camp run by a local NGO, Doosra Dashak (DD), which means second decade, his teacher gave him a second chance and a fresh lease on life. The teacher traced Maykalal’s unruly behaviour back to the harsh treatment by his father and reached out to the adolescent, who started doing better than other students at his level.

BK Sharma, project director, DD at Abu Road, says, “I wonder whether it was Maykalal that changed or it was we who discovered a way of ‘seeing’ what we don’t see!”

Trainers or didis (as they are affectionately called) at any of DD’s residential camps have similar stories to tell. Children come to these camps from extreme poverty and social eprivation; many are crippled by polio — yet most show a brave resilience that few adults can boast of.

DD reaches out to the inherent courage and strength of these children with love and patience. It provides direction to their lives and helps them chart out a future for themselves. A project of the Foundation for Education and
Development, which has been working since 2001 in remote areas of Rajasthan, DD is aimed at educating and helping adolescents.

Footsteps in the desert
DD started its work in the backward blocks of Bap and Kishanganj in the Jodhpur and Baran districts respectively, with support from the Tata Education Trust. It expanded its reach to three more blocks, with the same target group, in Bali (district Pali), Abu Road (district Sirohi) and Pisangan (district Ajmer). These were supported by different organisations.

DD is reaching out particulary to adolescents as it is a difficult and traumatic stage in life due to the physical, psychological and emotional changes that take place.

Sir Dorabji Tata Trust and allied trusts supported a study of DD, by TISS professor Denzil Saldanha, titled Doosra Dashak and The Education of Adolescents in Rural Areas: The Decade that Shapes the Future, based on his ongoing review of the programme over the previous grant period. Professor Saldanha summarises the rationale: “Due to their idealism and energy, adolescents and young adults constitute a tremendous force for change and reconstruction. What is needed is motivation, role models and building self-confidence.”

Low literacy makes adolescents in the state of Rajasthan particularly vulnerable. Most girls are married off before they can complete school, while acute poverty, lack of education and unemployment make the male population susceptible to the influence of alcohol, tobacco and high-risk sexual behaviour.

A congenial environment, positive intervention and suport are the critical need, which DD strives to provide. Anil Bordia, chairperson and managing
trustee, who has been involved in educational and women’s developmental programmes, believes that this is an area that the organisation must always focus on.

Building a solid foundation
Integrated education, health, gender equity and women’s empowerment, and community and organisation building have been identified by DD as areas needing intervention.

Integrated education is imparted by experienced trainers and teachers through four-month residential training camps, in the five blocks in which DD operates. The training programme is meant to give a second chance to youngsters who have dropped out of school. It goes beyond literacy: it explores their personalities and develops them, discusses personal hygiene, gender sensitivity, sexuality, social justice, human rights and similar issues. This approach has helped adolescents become responsible and active workers in their communities. DD consciously selects students from different castes and religions to help break down age-old prejudices and barriers.

Self-learning through libraries is encouraged; Gyan Vigyan Kendras (science centres) have been set up with the help of UNESCO; small community centres are being established; and there are open middle schools for older children to help them continue with their education.

DD has adopted a holistic approach for their health programmes — dealing with physical, psychological and emotional health issues. Activities include access to primary health care centres, identifying major diseases,
immunisation campaigns, attention to maternal health, mid-day meal programmes and counselling.

Awareness programmes on gender equity and women’s empowerment is an important area for DD. Jagrat Mahila Sangathans (women’s groups) have been formed at the village and block levels and nearly 50 per cent of all management personnel as well as adolescent participants at training camps are women.

The community and organisation building component of DD works with the weakest sections of society, women, and the local government and panchayats. Adolescents who receive training at the camps are trained to help the needy — the aged, and the physically and mentally challenged — and are also empowered to tackle social issues such as eve teasing and maintaining the public sanitation system.

Reaching out to many
SDTT and allied trusts have been supporting DD’s work since 2001 when the first grant of Rs140 lakh was given to them. This amount helped assist their Steering and Coordination Unit (SCU), established in Jaipur, to
coordinate and support the project in Bap and Kishanganj blocks and also to expand to other areas, and do advocacy work in this field.

In September 2006, another Rs682.50 lakh was sanctioned over a three-year period. The amount includes a corpus grant of Rs500 lakh towards securing the functioning of the SCU and for extending the activities of DD.

Today, DD works in more than 300 villages and 52 panchayats. Nearly 3,000 adolescents have benefited, of whom 2,000 are activists, about half of them girls. “Doosra Dashak is an innovative model for providing good,
relevant education to adolescents who dropped out of primary schooling. It not only focuses on providing education and skills to adolescents but also equips them to create a society based on equity and justice,” says Archana
Nambiar, programme officer at SDTT.

DD believes that adolescents can make a valuable contribution not only to the betterment of their own lives but also make a difference to the communities that they live in. It is already providing advisory services to a
number of NGOs in order to disseminate this approach.

Professor Saldanha, who had been appointed by SDTT to review the work done by DD over a period of five years, says, “The strategy of residential education as holistic basic education helps prepare adolescent persons for leadership through organised action for communitarian benefits.”
And although he has suggested that more emphasis is needed on continuing education activities of the project, he has recommended that this endeavour be supported on a long-term basis.

DD aims to expand the current project to other regions as well as reach out to a larger population. It plans to engage in replication and advocacy work at the national and international level; disseminate information; increase the number of villages being reached out to and give a high priority to continuing education. In other words, it wants to reach out to more and more children like Maykalal and give them a second chance at life.

Uploaded on July 4, 2007