Chinar

About the organization

We adopt a student-centric approach to improve teaching pedagogy skills and support teachers to bring a scalable change in the education sector in Jammu and Kashmir. Our interventions are focused on making children ready for the coming future by building educational leaders who will act as a catalyst for change in society.

Vision: Peace, progress, and prosperity in conflict areas of the world. 

Mission: Empowerment of orphans, vulnerable children, and marginalized youth in conflict areas through quality education and socio-economic initiatives.

Strategy: Our strategies include the bid to (a) provide education to children with humble backgrounds to bridge their learning gap through creative solutions., (b) improve the quality of education in schools through continuous sustained engagement and capacity building of relevant stakeholders, and (c) create a pool of young education leaders who would advocate issues and have a positive impact on education in Jammu & Kashmir (J&K)

Location of work

We are currently running programs across various districts of Jammu & Kashmir (India), especially in vulnerable to hard-to-reach areas. We are currently working in 10 districts of J&K, namely Bandipora, Baramulla, Srinagar, Kulgam, Shopian, Budgam, Kupwara, Pulwama Kishtwar, and Baderwah.

Project update

The program will cover 15 villages of Pattan and Sumbal block in districts Baramulla and Bandipora and will operationalize 15 CLC which will run for consecutive 3 years. Poverty, illiteracy, unemployment, lack of facilities, low-lying areas, climate, etc., are some major issues that are a big disaster to the surviving community. The prolonged closure of schools since the pandemic began has had catastrophic consequences on children’s education. About 80 percent of the parents felt their child’s ability to read and write has declined since the lockdown began. 

Children living in poverty are exposed to more stress that has negatively impacted their attention levels, lowered fitness and focus, and social skills. It was also revealed that the illiteracy of parents is one of the main reasons behind school dropouts in these villages. The majority of people are from Shia minority community where CHINAR is working – the community that is neglected on many parameters. The information received from ground partners, stakeholders, and CHINAR’s ground team has proposed the scaleup in the two blocks CHINAR has also started livelihood and youth development initiatives in the same area. 

Children who were earlier devoid of quality education and were wasting their time wandering aimlessly, are now enrolled in our CLCs. Our CLCs provide an amicable environment to meet their basic educational needs.

As part of a plan, resource identification Community centre facilitators (CCF) who have passion and commitment and are willing to step up and become change-makers are identified from local communities. Each centre will have one CCF Student selection criteria School dropouts/out-of-school children (OOSC) in the intervention area. Students from 1st to 8th grade with low learning competencies. Preference will be given to first-generation learners with difficult financial resources. 

Learning

• Experimentation is the beginning of innovation and Innovation is driven by curiosity to learn and unlearn. 
• Insisting on data, rather than assumptions forms a solid foundation for decision-making and fact-based evidence. 
• Domain expertise comes with regular capacity building of staff and sustained critical productive discussions and reflections,
• Community is the core component of the sustainability of any project. 
• The introduction of FLN reflects tangibly in the learning growth of the children. This is attributed to the fact that the training attended by facilitators on FLN has upgraded their skills and updated their teaching style which is reflected in the progress of students. 
• Peer learning between students, teachers, and staff provides them with opportunities to teach and be taught by one another, expanding their perspectives and fostering meaningful connections. 
• The natural ways of learning by using a mother tongue proved to be the best medium of comprehending and learning. 
• We need to promote multilingualism for better learning of children. 
• Enhancing the classroom ecosystem, wall literacy, and delivering lessons through play activities had a positive impact on student attendance, learning retention, overall confidence, and mental health of children. 

Challenges 

• Shifting of the ward/ families leads to the irregularity of students. It is difficult to reach and involve parents who are busy with their own jobs or are working several jobs to make ends meet.
• It is challenging for facilitators to give equal time to different levels of students in the class. 
• Parents are generally inclined towards completing the syllabus of children rather than on their learning gaps, hence convincing such parents is a challenge for us. 

Future plans

In this year and the coming future, we will stay focussed on creating community champions for education among the youth of Kashmir at the grassroots level. An effort will be made to engage with government officials and the community to drive change at the scale for FLN and implement the New Education Policy (NEP), 2020. We will undertake evidence-based research for developing solutions and Document best practices. The organization will develop a socio-emotional learning framework and content for Jammu and Kashmir that is in tandem with the requirements of the 21st century. Close to 15 percent of the project time needs to be spent on capacity building and reflections over learning.