Children of the New Dawn, Quality Education School,TRDSW, Torpa

Background

The Torpa Rural Development Society for Women (TRDSW) is situated in the Khunti District of Jharkhand. It aims at empowering the tribal community through the education and livelihood of children and women. It has been mainly working with the Munda tribe. 

The TRDW founder, Sr. Karuna Mary, was invited to St. Joseph College, Torpa for a meeting. When she saw how few girls were in the college, she felt called to do something for the young girls in the area. In 1999, she built a hostel for village girls and the English school of the Children of the New Dawn opened under the umbrella of the TRDSW. Sr Karuna, in very adverse circumstances visited different villages, convincing parents about the importance of education for girls.

Objective

To provide quality education for children

Activities

• Tribal children quality education

  • English lessons: English is the key to good jobs and to positions in which to make one's voice heard - instruction is held in Hindi and hardly any parents can speak English. English medium schools are not given any aid by the Jharkhand Government. Each class takes a turn at speaking on a subject briefly in English at the daily morning assembly. A syllabus has been prepared and lessons also have been prepared, with guidelines for teachers, to introduce progressively all the normal sentence structures used in speaking in English. This has been divided into 4 parts so that by Class 4 the whole syllabus will have been taught. For classes 1 to 4, the sentences that they frequently use have been translated into English and put up on charts in each of these classrooms. They are expected to make use of these.Teachers and students are asked to use English in their daily interactions, progressively from Class 1 to Class 10, while in school. 

  • Children's club

  • School management committees

  • Solar electricity for computing lessons: computers are available in the school (students do not have these devices at home) but there are often power cut and electricity fluctuates having to end lessons before the hour because of these tecnical problems. Contact with solar panel dealer for the purchase of solar batteries and solar inverters

  • Teacher academic training: teachers follow in-service academic program to improve their skills; these are run by the National Education Board or by the nearby Jesuit college.

  • Values: For Christian children-Religion classes are held two periods in a week. Their attendance at Sunday mass is followed up on Monday. There were 2 school masses for which each class took responsibility for some part of the mass. A 2 day retreat was organised for Classes 7 to 10.  Before Christmas & Easter the sacrament of confession was arranged for all the Catholic children. For non-Christian children there were moral education classes, two periods a week. In order to inculcate respect for all religions in our multi-religious/multi-cultural country, particularly in view of the present tendencies of polarization along religious and caste lines, the feasts of different religions are celebrated at the morning Assembly, generally by enacting something from the feast along with giving information about it. Thus we celebrated the Hindu feasts of RakshaBandhan, Chhatt, RathYatra, Diwali and Makar Sankranti; Eid ulFitr, and Bakri Eid of the Muslims; Christmas (with a full Christmas play), the feasts of St.Madeleine Sophie and St. PhillipineDuchesne, the canonization of Mother Theresa (with skits on her life at 3 morning Assemblies). Classes 8,9 & 10 were given 2 days of sex education, including the psychological and moral aspects, by one of our sisters who is very experienced in giving these classes. 

Results

• English lessons: One of the immediate and visible effects was the excellent exam results of our students from class 10. Of  the 17 who appeared for the Board exam, one got 80% and was the 2^nd highest in the district among the 3 ICSE English medium schools. Four other students got above 75% and the rest were all above 60%. Most of them then managed to get into good institutions in Ranchi, having passed their entrance tests. In addition, we have seen that most students who graduated from our school in the last 3 years, were able to get help from their extended families to somehow complete the next 2 years of higher secondary education through a good university college, which enables them to go for professional courses or to continue with the same help till graduation from the university college.

• Tribal people become convinced of the importance of education for their children. 

• Many of the children attending the school are first generation learners.

• Solar panels for computing lessons: Lessons quality improved. Indirectly the solar panels were used for other electrical provision (fans, micro for meetings, etc)

• In 2018, a library was setup which provided a space for silent study and literacy for further research and study

• Teachers' training: The trainings they have attended has given them exposure to new ideas and methods. They have applied some of the methods learnt e.g the drilling of difficult words, encouraging the weak students with some token whenever they perform well, giving special recognition to those who perform well.

• Values: The attendance at Sunday mass has improved considerably and all the Catholic children now go for mass. Our multicultural students mix very naturally with each other. They also volunteered for enacting the celebration or ritual of another religion. The students also gain confidence as they enact or give information in front of the whole school. The sex education classes were really necessary. Though the physical aspect is in the student class 10 biology text book, this does not cover the psychological and moral aspects. When we started these, the parents were asked whether they had any objection. They were only too glad that we were giving these sessions, as they feel helpless to do it and the children are getting exposed to so much in this line, without getting proper guidance. The children too were happy and eager to have these classes, and came for them even though it was on Saturday, a half day for school, and on Sunday.  The students felt free to ask questions (written on unsigned papers) and were glad to get their questions answered.

People being served : Children and Young People

Age group : Children 0-17

Number of participants : >500

Project status : Ongoing

Society presence : India

Focus of the project : People

JPIC Imperative : Transforming and Being Transformed

UN Sustainable Development Goals : 10 Reduced Inequalities, 4 Quality Education, 7 Affordable and Clean Energy