International Projects and Programmes:
ICCERT has been initiating and undertaking Supplementary school services in the villages in India. Supplementary School services involve formal and non-formal education for the school children and the drop out children as well. This project targets all children from all backgrounds. But DALITS children are the major beneficiaries of this project because most of the DALITS live in the villages where there are no schools near to their habitats.
The main highlight of this project is, it not only gives opportunity to learn but also the children get food at the centers and they can be happy and focus on their studies. Most of the DALIT parents live in the villages are poor and labourers. They use to go to work in the morning and come back to home in the evening very tired and sometimes exhausted. Then the parents have to go to the nearby shops and buy food commodities and come home and then cook and feed the hungry children. It would be midnight by the time supper becomes ready and the children became exhausted, tired and started sleeping with empty stomach. In most cases, children have no strength to do their home works or study. Quiet often, the parents leave the house for work early in the morning before the children get up from their mats on the floor and the weeping children get little satisfaction only when they see the food in the earthen pots on the hanging shelves made up of ropes or some natural strings. If more than one child in the house, they can fight each other for the food because they know that the food may not be sufficient for all of them and they afraid each other who would grab more food than the other. Sometimes, because of the quarrel and fight for the food the earthen container falls on the floor and broke and all food became partly mixed with sand and dust. The children would not be quite, they grab the upper layer of the food and eat as quickly as they can; by the time it is almost time to leave home for school and they were on search of their clothes and books. Accusing each other for their missing pen or pencil even partly torn note books, finally they start their journey to the school without bath, shower, even without cleaning their teeth or going to toilet, which on the open neighborhood.
Looking on the neighbourhood,on the untarred village road and the trees, when the children reaches the schools, the classes would have already started and the teacher would be looking at the children and passing harsh comments and sometimes offer them slashes with the small wooden sticks and finally push them or allow them to sit in the classes. While children coming from families where their parents are rich or average and they focus on the lessons in the class, the children from the poor village household are not able to listen or focus on their studies, they might be thinking about their food, their day`s lunch and evening supper. They use to worry about their food, their uncared parents etc. Sometimes, the teacher ask questions, they couldn`t answer and when they stand in the class like innocent fools, other children looked at them and laugh at them passing little abusive comments and the teacher unhesitatingly listen and join in the laugh of the class. The poor children get more worried and upset. This is a real small picture of the remote village school atmosphere and the situations of the poor children.
After taking into consideration of the pathetic, deplorable situation of village DALIT children, ICCERT has taken a task to start Supplementary schools in the villages where there are very poor children face emotional, physical and educational problems. ICCERT has started twenty supplementary schools in different twenty villages in India even though ICCERT lacks funds for the successful implementation and extension of this project.
