Rainbow Primary School

Yesterday, the children, parents, and teachers picked the name for the school.

RAINBOW PRIMARY SCHOOL

I immediately ordered "Rainbow Head" wigs. Just kidding.

We all stayed after the meeting to remove a thick layer of sand from the floor of our hut. It was making a mess during school time, dust was always in the air. There were one hundred little hands scurrying to fill buckets with sand, then tussling over who got to use the shovel to put the sand in the buckets. Other kids were fighting over who got to take the buckets of sand to the sandpile. The teachers formed a bucket line to pass the buckets down to the place to dump the sand. I helped them. As buckets came by, we would say "This is ice cream!" or "This is veg biriyani!" There were also a few three- and four-year-olds who forced their way onto the worksite. They had tiny little buckets they would fill with sand, the put on their heads (like their mommies) and walk, very straight and tall, to the bucket line. Whenever we would see one of those tiny buckets come down, we would just crack up. Another amazing day at the school I will never forget.

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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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