OVEE

About the organization

Vision: To create an egalitarian society with the emancipatory tools of education. 

Mission: Enrichment of underprivileged citizens by improving their knowledge and practices through long-term and effective grassroots interventions.

Location of work

The organization works in Mendhala, Kalamb taluka, of Yavatmal district. 

Learning over the last year

• Over the last year, the organization has realized the importance of creating a conducive environment for education within local communities. 
• Demonstrative and holistic care with a value system builds trust in community stakeholders and their participation. 
• Each connected stakeholder must be in the loop of knowing and owning the initiative. 
• Out-of-school children can be helped with various other initiatives.

We are noticing that children like to come to Balnagari Center and are having a good learning experience but avoid going to formal schools. Thus, we have made it compulsory for those who are enrolled in school to attend school as a criterion to come to Balnagari. We incentivized this criterion with a system of rewards and collective appreciation.  We also learned that focused incentives work in the case of children. Identifying the needs of children themselves and securing their participation is also important. 

Starting from intervening in language and mathematics teaching, we realized that children also need more games, art, dialogue circles, and library time. These types of creative learning spaces and activities help in more holistic and joyful learning. We focused on new activities and learning methods on a daily basis so that children get to learn and enjoy different methods and find it curious to explore. Identifying the interests of children and shaping them into learning outcomes is often fruitful. 

We observed the randomness in the arrival time of the children. To figure out the reasons for the same, we visited parents/guardians and discussed the matter with them. Through discussions, we came to a set of rules and enforced them. Now, there is a fixed time in consensus with children and parents, and we utilize time more properly now. Similar issues such as those relating to donations, visitors, sectarian and caste-based differences, and violence, were sorted using a similar approach. 

Challenges

• The communities we work with are mostly nomadic. They keep shifting from one location to another with their herds of sheep and goats. 
• Due to continuous and distant mobility, it is hard for children to be enrolled and study continuously. Twenty out of our 90 children in Balnagari had to migrate with family which resulted in the discontinuation of their learning. 
• The girl child is expected to do the household chores due to which the attendance of girls is invariably low. It is hard to find a suitable way to address this. 
• The Balnagari center is confined to a small 10 x 12 feet room. This is grossly insufficient for the 90 to 110 children it deals with. It is challenging to accommodate everyone with the storage requirements of learning resources. 
• We lack skills in outreach, communication, documentation, and fundraising. 

Plan of action

In the coming future we will aim to:

• Develop the Library program and operationalize it with 1-School 2-Balnagari
• Collaboration with ICDS for supporting in rollout of the State’s AAKAR curriculum in 5-10 Anganwadis by capacity building of Anganwadi Sevika, handholding visits in Anganwadi, and enriching parents for child development. 
• Fellowship Curriculum Development
• Develop Balnagari Curriculum 
• Develop a Monitoring and evaluation system for Balnagari children and educators. 
• Build a clear understanding of child-centric learning, constructivism, education policy, and conceptual, and operational aspects of the FLN program in Ovee Team, to construct a strong base for long-term interventions. 
• Connect and visit various organizations working along similar lines, such as Digantar, Khelghar, Reading Keeda, Balbhavan, Book Worm, Maharastra Balshikshan Parishad, and Grammangal. This will be undertaken to facilitate cross-learning. 
• Build and strengthen a team with expertise in educational pedagogy and curriculum development. Build the capacity of team members for liaison and communication. 
• Find incubators and micro-fellowships to nurture different verticals.
• Build individual donor and institutional donor/supporter databases and linkages to connect. 
• Build all the policy documents for Ovee Trust like, the Child Protection Policy, Vishakha Samiti, HR Policy, Recruitment Policy, Finance Policy, etc. 

As an organization, we devote three days a month toward capacity building. This includes sessions of 4 to 5 hours a week. Every alternate day we also devote an hour or two towards such an objective. 

In the coming future Ovee Trust looks forward to support in the following areas:

• FLN and ECCE pedagogy curriculum development and session modules. 
• Library program design
• Life skill education curriculum activities 
• Art and craft activities 
• Organisational Management and Compliance 
• Financial Management of Non-Profits 
• Impact Measurement metrics for social programs 
• Team-relation building dynamics for long-term sustaining organizations 
• Community dialogues and counseling for change. 
• Education Policies RTE, Rights Effective writing for children and educators.