Sunitha and Her Little One

This is Sunitha with her little one. The big spot on the baby is to ward off the evil spirits. There is another by her ear. All the babies here are running around with spots on various places.

Sunitha is about 80 lbs of dynamite. She wrangles all the preschoolers and may be the only preschool educator in the state to sing nursery rhymes in Hindi, Telegu, and English to her class. After the preschoolers go home, she teaches drawing and referees games of "Red Rover" and "Red Light/Green Light" for the 1st and 2nd Standard children.

Today, I walked into the neighborhood towards the school at the usual time after dropping Campbell off at her preschool. It was quiet. Too quiet. Where were all the little kids who flap around me every time I turn onto the street, screaming "HI AUNTIE?" I walked and walked. I saw the littlest ones stuck to their mommies like baby opossums, but no other children. This is WIERD. I reached the gate to the courtyard where we have our hut. Then it struck me and I giggled so hard. The kids were in SCHOOL. They were in the school! I've been smiling all day.

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MobilesForGood: EDU

Together with the students, parents, and teaching team, we did it. Ten years of the Rainbow Primary School. Our school is a government-funded, local-language (Telugu) school that serves 230 children every day absolutely free. We celebrated by opening an after-school center last month with the best education NGO in the world, Pratham. For the past five years, I've worked on research projects and helped NGOs that have an interest in developing mobile tools for learning. Globally, there are three populations of students that need to close the education gap. 1. 52 million children globally not in school at all. Most are out of school for one or more of these reasons: conflict/no public services (fragile state), lack of legal papers, migrants, or they are female. Migration is a big issue in our area around the Rainbow School. 2. 200 million children globally are in school, but suffer from poor in-class teaching. These students cannot read at grade level. The most common reason

Gray Matters Capital and the Rockdale Foundation

While all is very well at the Rainbow School, I'll pause to highlight a "sister organization" supporting budget private schools in India. Gray Matters Capital and the Rockdale Foundation have an annual symposium in Hyderabad, called "Enterprising Schools." Buddies of mine from here in Palo Alto, the Hewlett Foundation and IDEO, are heading out there next week. More info is on www.enterprisingschools.com My IDEO fellas organized a whole list of very low-cost teaching aide ideas to present at the symposium. Ideas like using old newpapers to teach literacy. They put the list up on the website under "STEAL THIS IDEA" - click here for the list! (in pdf form) BEST WISHES for a successful symposium, I miss you all in Hyderabad!

On Monday, August 18, I was so happy to return to see the Rainbow School. The teachers have made a plan to shift from Telugu to English medium. My friend at Pratham, one of the largest education NGOs -- serving 5 million children in South Asia and Africa -- agreed to help my teachers. My co-partner, Kalpana, is taking the lead on a facilities upgrade. She will oversee an upgrade to the preschool and main building. Kalpana and I have found donors in India and the United States. The children were sharp, completely up on their marks. The teachers were creative, driven, relentless. More to come!

Rainbow Primary School

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