Historically, in India, participation of girls in education has lagged behind that of boys at all levels of education. Its retrospective effect is reflected in the low female literacy rate continuing till date as a challenge. The costs of missing opportunity of educating girls to the society may be far higher than the investment required for educating them. So SSA in AP collaborated with APMSS (AP Mahila Samkhya) or MS to do massive campaign on RTE using Fine and Folk Arts.

 

 

 The campaign in all low literacy mandals of the State in order to reach the expected objectives in a given period of ten months and will be taken up in two phases. While speaking of the low literacy mandals, the number is not available for Hyderabad district and the districts of West Godavari, Kadapa and Nellore do not have low literacy mandals. There is only one mandal with lower than 50% literacy rate in Krishna district, hence not falling in to the criteria for taking up the campaign. Similarly 2 mandals in Chittor and 6 mandals in East Godavari are tribal mandals with lower than 50%.

Since theidentification of child labour, dropout children and mapping of low literacy and low enrollment areas is already done by respective institutions the following is the plan for implementation.

 

As the tribal mandals need specific strategies, given the cultural and geographical context, content and form of the Kalajatha will be suitably altered given its specific background, with lowest literacy rates. Also these will need to be translated into local tribal languages for each of the districts with tribal population. Separate groups consisting of local tribal persons need identified and trained.

 

To cover the habitations in tribal areas, more number of days is required for each of the teams to cover two mandals due to lack of transportation, distances between the habitations and large number of habitations with less population.

 

® Identifying the mandals for performing Kalajathas and making necessary arrangements through reception committees

® Organizing State level writers’ workshop to produce new songs, plays and folk forms on the provisions of RTE Act. Inviting writers who are already experienced in campaign mode and women writers who are writing songs but needs refining.

® Production of cultural forms and Audio recording

® Preparation of posters, pamphlets and other necessary campaign material

® Identification and Training of cultural teams. These trainings will be done in two phases - 4 teams per district of 14 districts will be trained in first phase and each team will be performing in 4 mandals in two phases. Extra team, in case required, will be trained in the second phase. Mahabubnagar district requires special/separate training given its large number of low literacy mandals. 14 teams would be required to cover all these mandals. Moreover, to cover the tribal mandals separate trainings are needed. In Guntur and RR districts 5 teams per district will be trained to cover two mandals by each team. One of these teams will cover the remaining 1 mandal in RR district. In the second phase, additional teams will be trained for Karimnagar (2), Kurnool (1), Medak (3) and Nizamabad (2) to cover the remaining mandals which are not covered by the teams trained in the first phase. These teams will be trained subsequent to the first phase trainings. 

Jatha – Perfomance            :  

Since the campaign is intended to be performed in all the districts in two phases, the strategies of performances will slightly differ. While in the first 14 districts, the village level sanghams, federations will coordinate the performances/campaign, SLMA, I&PR or any other NGO who is doing contemporary theatre on social issues will be identified and trained for the performances. The major points that will be kept in mind during the performance will be: 

 

 

 

 

The entire campaign, including pre-jatha activities will take about four months time starting from September 2011 to December 2011.

 

Post Jatha follow up            :  Follow up activities for ensuring total enrolment, retention and women’s literacy will be taken up in the post Jatha phase.

·   Plan of Action will be evolved with village elders for their role in follow up activities and facilitate formation of child rights protection committees

·   Ensuring Starting of literacy centres with in 15 days after Jatha

·   Strengthening of existing literacy centers by ensuring regularity, access of material to all the learners in time