A Grand Day Out - Thanks to Hand of Hope Legal Services

On Saturday, the Hand of Hope Legal Services team hosted our fourth and fifth standard students for a spectacular day out. They organized a fun football between our team and the A.P. Police.

There were high-ranking government officials, including the Chief of Police of the state, and there was even a Telegu movie star! Here he is, in orange. This guy has tens of millions of fans in South India, more fans than David Hasselhoff has in Germany.

The children really enjoyed this day. They chattered on and on in the sunshine, they cheered for the teams, they teased each other and ran all around. And they loved riding on a private bus, bouncing all along the way with their friends (with Neha teacher and Divya teacher as chaperones).

They didn't smile for the picture, but I promise they were hooting and hollering all day.

Stephen Sen and his partner at the law firm, Raju, arranged for hundreds of very deserving children to attend. All the children are struggling: some have HIV or AIDS, some are from severely deprived homes, others are orphans. All of them have vastly difficult lives and they truly loved having a day outside in the fresh air and outside of their worries.

A big surprise was each student received a gift box of goodies from Samaritan’s Purse. The kids just couldn't get over it. The event made the papers and the T.V., thanks to the movie stars and the Chief. This brought much needed media attention to the organizations serving the children who attended.

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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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