People’s Rural Education Movement (PREM) is a secular, humanitarian, non-political and non-governmental organization working for the development of Adivasi (indigenous), Dalit, Fisher folk and other marginalized communities of Odisha and other states of India. The primary objectives of PREM’s development programmes are to spread education, improve healthcare, implement livelihood initiatives, build capacity for good governance, and promote and protect the rights of children and women among marginalized communities.
Mother Tongue Based Multilingual Early Childhood Education Demo Project is one such initiative of PREM where it is being conceived that best way to impart education in every child is through their mother tongue rather than using foreign languages.
Early Childhood is acknowledged as the most crucial period in a person’s life, when the rate of development is very high and foundations are laid for cumulative lifelong learning and human development Early Childhood Care and Education is an indispensable foundation for lifelong learning and development, and has critical impact on success at the primary stage of education.
Every child has the right to access mother tongue based multilingual early childhood education in the early stage or in the preschool centre. Mother tongue is the natural and
most appropriate medium for communicating with the child for holistic development. Cognitive development of the child is not possible if the child doesn’t get the suitable environment to learn.
MY EXPERIENCE
I worked on this particular project of theirs for about 2 weeks. I personally chose this as I wanted to open up to the problems faced by the tribal children of Odisha.
Over the time span of 28 June 2016 to 14 July 2016, I helped develop context Teaching Learning Materials (TLMs) for the Mother tongue based Multilingual Early Childhood Education Demo Project.
I worked with their team who prepares various props used for teaching children ranging from the ages of 2 to 6. I observed that all the materials used for making the props were inexpensive and easily available to the children of the rural/tribal areas.
All the materials used are either of very low cost or from waste products or naturally available. The various materials I worked on were Coloured stones for learning difference of colours, shape cards, Spinning wheel to demonstrate object-object relations and Routine cards. The other materials include of colour sticks, Mud objects, story box, picture puzzles and texture boards.
Some of the learning materials prepared for various kinds of cognitive development of children are displayed in the figures below.
WHAT I LEARNT
This entire experience has been eye-opening. I realized that not every child is as fortunate as us to study in well-established schools right from our early years. We have had the privilege to attend the early years of schooling in Play school, Nursery and kindergarten.
However, there are millions of children around the world living in tribal and rural areas who do not access to these early years of education. A very sturdy example of this is in our own
state of Odisha, where lakhs and lakhs of children remain uneducated in the years of 2017. If all of us contribute in our own way towards these children, we can make their lives much better by providing them education.
“Your contribution will bring smiles all around Odisha”