Nation-Wide Polio Vaccination Day...a Really, Really Good Day.

The school was the site of polio vaccinations for the whole neighborhood, part of a nation-wide campaign! Very exciting! Nurses scurring in and out directing our teachers, our teachers administering vaccines, all kinds of craziness. Sunitha, Divya, Neha, and Laxmi went hut to hut and won a 90% success rate for vaccinating the target population (some children were out of town). A total thrill for me was giving a few vaccinations.

On the left is NAGA, the fearless! Our little mascot is safe from polio. Here is Aliya, our special needs student, with his beautiful mommy.

An aside here: I have to say, this mommy is amazing. She warms up Aliya's water for his bath, using a bit of the precious little gas allotted to her through a ration card, just to make sure his wee-sized body doesn't get the chills.

But back to the vaccination day: During all this chaos, we may have found a partner for the eggs and milk plans. We just happened to run across a group who exclusively gathers volunteers to hand out cups of milk and eggs directly to children in slum communities. The group organizer is all excited to come to the school. It was a really, really good 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...

"A" Grade

Our partner, Kalpana, reports exams are over. This year, the Rainbow School won "A" grade for student performance up from "B" grade in 2009. CONGRATULATIONS TEAM!! HUGE WIN! This means that the team is providing high quality teaching in a very sustainable way. Congratulations teachers! Congratulations Vijaya Madam! And thanks to all the partners, the Rainbow School is very lucky to have wonderful, wonderful partner organizations like WIM, Lion's Club, and the Naandi Foundation. Here are some of the students, taking part of their exams in the courtyard, back in 2009. Next steps: Compete with the local budget private schools, win best government primary school in the state, and English + Telugu instruction

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!

Rainbow Primary School

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