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Learning Space- A Tribal Welfare Project in Thane, India
Regd. Public Trust No. E-4258(Thane) The 'Learning Space' Project A tribal education -- empowerment non-profit service working in the Thane district of Maharashtra, India. A Report - JAN 2008 The Learning Space program in its wake has made possible to envision and practice a 'holistic' way of development in a child at the primary school level. The LS project works its way through resistance in all forms, in a society that is predominantly tribal facing severe problems of disease, malnutrition, infant mortality, alchoholism, AIDS and so forth. The only way out of this vicious cycle is targeting the root cause of all ills and evils; educating the children of the region in a manner that an all-round development transforms the perception of the young populace. In its day to day work, the program brings forth all aspects of teaching, in the form of 'before/after-school' sessions for children from primary to middle level schooling. The sessions comprise of English learning, Living Values education, Music & Singing, Art & Creativity; which are imparted in lively ways with the help of visual aids & audio-visual educational tools. The LS program recognizes how vital it is to get local primary school teachers acquainted and trained in these non-conventional methods of teaching. And effectively it has conducted many workshops for teachers to boost their spirit and enliven their teaching methods. The setting up of Learning Space project has its background and connection to a very serious lack felt in the rural and tribal regions of India -- the dearth of skilled teaching of the English language and the resulting failure of school students at the 10th std. Board exam. The Learning Space team conducted a survey in 2005, in more than 25 village schools in the region, to look into the deficiencies of the system. The interviews with Principals and Officials of schools led us to the following main conclusions; 1. That it was very essential to strengthen the English learning process at the very start i.e. at the primary school level. 2. That primary school teachers in rural areas needed to be empowered with effective English language teaching tools. Learning Space has over the last two and a half years brought considerable change, specifically in the area of English Learning in the underprivileged region. Apart from sending out its teachers and volunteers to schools, and distributing free workbooks that would make English learning easy and fun, we had the rare chance of a musician and singer from Australia, Michael Turner who came into the project, offering to work with the children in the area of Music and English teaching. He placed forth the idea of writing for the children some simple value-based inspiring English songs and teach them to the children.