Happy Day School
Giving formal holistic English based quality education to marginalized children and equipping their mothers with the means of a livelihood and means to support their children’s education.
Project Description:BAWCSWS has been working in north 24 parganas in West Bengal, India since 2002. The organization has established its objective of offering holistic quality education to the community children by involving the parents in the education of their wards Basudevpur Vivekananda Free Primary School was established in 1980 in Basudevpur, a village in North 24 parganas West Bengal which has been included in the Municipal jurisdiction now.
Lack of funds, inproper infrastructure & weak management, and no up gradation schemes had resulted in the closing of the school in 2008 . BAWCSWS was approached by the elderly headmaster and the local community to re-commission the school as an English medium school for the village and urban poor community children so that they could avail of it and be educated in the English medium system, a major requirement of modern times. In consultation with the community and its support BAWCSWS up scaled the infrastructural requirements with the support of Rotary Clubs and local support. Proper toilets, drinking water and most importantly electricity was made available and the school was re-opened and re-named in 2016 as Happy Days School, an English medium, co-ed school catering to the children from the poorer sector of society. Initially the school is upto IV which shall be gradually taken upto Class X. The project strives to establish quality education and an increasing enrolment and retention in the school. It aims to be established as a “Model School” making English based education accessible to all.
Keeping in mind the financial condition of the parents the project also aims at equipping the mothers with basic education and a vocational training via which they could earn a decent livelihood and means to support their children’s education.
PROJECT BACKGROUND
For the past seventeen years BAWCSWS has been working in the areas of child education & women empowerment in North 24 Parganas West Bengal. Basudevpur is a village in Shyamnagar municipality. The area is on the Kalyani express way and is lagging behind in most essential aspects of modern education, health, transport and livelihood prospects. The majority of the population are either farmers, daily wage earners or having small business ip grocery, vegetable shops etc.
Though most of these parents have dreams of educating their children at the city standards but have no means of affording it and thus are compelled to send the first generation learners to the local govt. schools where English is introduced from class V and there exists no proper system of evaluation or any access to modern technology i.e. computer education.
All students are promoted up to class VIII. This makes the children lag terribly behind. The organization has re-commissioned a closed school in consultation with the community as an English Medium co-ed school for the village and urban poor children. The school aspires to service 15 adjoining villages and one municipal area.
Happy School is a formal school aiming at eventually being up graded to Class X level from its present primary state via its robust educational model. The project combines traditional content with critically important social, health and educational skill combined with innovative pedagogy for overall development of the students.
Happy Days School (HDS) will also address the issue of power imbalances related to gender issues and its intervention will promote the girl-child education HDS will be headed by a managing committee which shall have representatives from the parents, teachers and community.
The mothers are empowered and their participation in their ward’s education encouraged. Regular child counseling and parent teacher meeting are constant feature. The poor students of the large under developed area have access to quality education , preparation of a good base and equipped to compete with the city students. HDS are “Model School” of quality education, teaching learning methods provisions of alternative vocational training and most importantly are helped to groom good citizens of India.
Purpose Statement: Provide quality education to children as is their right by empowering their mothers to sustain it. Full co-operation from the parents and 100% dedication of the teachers in importing high quality education and good mobilization has made the project successful. A lack of resource at the initial state of the project was a stalling factor which has been minimized by assuring the support of a partnering organization and also the contribution from the parents.
PROJECT FRAMEWORK
The project has established a formal school in a village area having English as a medium, enabling the poor students to have an equal footing with their privileged city based school students as they haveaccess to quality education, computer education and a holistic school life.
BAWCSWS has been working in a number of backward communities successfully as an educator and bridge unit. Every year numerous students have been mainstreamed into govt schools . Long years of experience hand in- hand with a team of well-equipped trained teachers and an eager interested parents group backed by the community has resulted in the re- commissioning of the school “Happy Day School” in Basudevpur ,a village in north 24 Parganas West Bengal.
The model school is center for quality education, child friendly technologies and a catalyze for the development of excellence in children who otherwise had no other choice other than the local govt. school where the main activity is the mid-day meal or the concept of promoting all students till class VIII ,with the least importance give to education and up scaling the standard.