Recently, I was honored to be part of an email discussion with folks currently living in Delhi concerning whether a group of children living nearby the American Embassy School would be able to benefit from a program called MAD - Make a Difference.
Easy question to answer, right? Read on about the MAD program ...
Easy question to answer, right? Read on about the MAD program ...
MAD is a youth network, working with orphans and unprivileged kids in India. Made up of mostly college student volunteers, MAD specifically teaches the English language to children in orphanages, street shelters and poor homes.
During the recent visit of President Obama and the First Lady, the United States Ambassador Timothy Roemer and his wife accompanied them to Mumbai. During that visit, the First Lady and Mrs. Roemer had the chance to visit a MAD classroom and a passion was born!
Sally Roemer quickly realized that there was a huge missing gap in the education of the children at the Vivekand Camp right here in Delhi. Because their schooling does not include English (or very little), they are almost destined for being one of the statistics for early dropout, and for a future of unemployment, or employment at a very low wage.
The question that burned on her mind?
Was it rational to believe a pool of volunteers from our community (mostly parents, quite a few teachers and some high school students) could pull this together, in short order, to bring this same program to the kids ... literally across the street?
WHAT IS MAD ALL ABOUT?
* taken from the Make A Difference website ::
The Make A Difference project was initiated by a few of us in our second year of college when we saw a large disparity in the way rich and the poor learned. We realized that the system created a gap from the very early years of a child’s life and as time passed by, the gap only increased. We saw a huge untapped resource amongst us youngsters who if provided the right platform were capable of bridging the gap. Hence, twenty of us in the city of Cochin founded Make a Difference with a vision “To bridge the inequality in society through education.”India has one of the highest drop out rates in the world. Even though over 70% of our children enroll for primary education, 72% of them would have dropped out by the time they reach standard 10. But being first generation learners, education is most critical for this 72%.In Make a Difference, we currently focus on India’s urban underprivileged, particularly children in street shelters, orphanages, and poor homes. Our children are street smart, intelligent and mature. Yet hardly any of them get the opportunity to continue their education after 10th. This is primarily due to two reasons.First is the lack of financial support. Most children are taken care of only till the age of 15, after which they are on their own. The education they receive till then is very generic and provides them with no specific skills, which forces them into doing menial jobs for a living.Second, and more important reason why even the children who are sponsored cant cope up is the lack of quality education. Our children go to schools where the medium of instruction is in the vernacular language till 10th. But after 10th, the medium is compulsorily in English and most jobs have English language proficiency as one of its basic requirement. Hence even if we are able to sponsor students with good scores for higher education they are unable to cope. The bridge here is the English language.Our aim is to ensure the underprivileged children are brought into the main stream so they can chose their careers based on their potential and interests and not their financial constraints.Our MAD English course is a five level program of 100 hours each. Every year our children go though 56 interactive classes of two hour duration. By the end of the 5th level the child’s communication skills will be at par with a private school student. We have an active placements program that runs side by side to keep the children aware of their career options and keep them motivated to study harder.Our aim is to ensure a 100% retention rate in Indian schools. Currently we work in 11 districts in India with over 800 volunteers, teaching 2500 children (in Cochin, Pune, Delhi, Mumbai, Mangalore, Bangalore, Trivandrum, Hyderabad, Nagpur and Chennai). We plan to reach out to 10,000 children in the coming year.
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It's hard for me to believe that MAD is amazingly not even SIX YEARS OLD, having been founded in 2006!
The founders of the program started at the YMCA Poor Boys Home in Thrikkakara. In the beginning there was no focus to the activities done in class. Overtime, a syllabus was developed in association with the TTF (Teacher Training Foundation) and then later on with the help of EZ Vidya.
Starting in 2010, Make A Difference began using Cambridge University Press material in all of their classrooms. These textbooks take students from a "Starter" workbook/textbook to an Intermediate Level.If you want to read a brief blurb about the reasons behind Cambridge getting involved (and see some great photos, visit HERE)
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Thank you to the founding members of the MAD organization --- Kavin KK, Jithin C Nedumala, Sujith Abraham Varkey, Santosh Babu, Gloria Benny and Jithin John Varghese --- for seeing a need and filling that gap! It is absolutely amazing to read about what they have created ... before they even have had a chance to finish their OWN studies. Just incredible.
For more information about the existing programs :
Photos and Slideshow
Media Highlights
Stay tuned for more on MAD : Vivekand Camp, Delhi !
I will be posting about the stories, process and integration of the MAD program at Vivekand every Monday for the next couple of months ... I'm looking forward to telling you ALL about it!
I will be posting about the stories, process and integration of the MAD program at Vivekand every Monday for the next couple of months ... I'm looking forward to telling you ALL about it!
A challenge from the Make A Difference group :: Its time we made a difference ...You felt this when you looked into the boy's eyes who was begging for a one rupee coin,but then you thought what difference could you possibly make...what you are capable of is restricted only by your thoughts....dare to come forward...dare to make a difference and we will show you a million ways to change the world.
