Building and Engineer News

In "Building and Engineer News," we are still not even close to getting over Hari's transfer. He was our engineer at the district education department. He was the best! However, Raja Rutnam, his new replacement, is well on his way to a solid place in our hearts. We are all looking forward to working with him on the new building.

Construction is still stalled. We're in a catch-22. There is a law requiring 3 feet of setbacks on all sides of a government building. There is also a law requiring all classrooms be 10 by 20 feet minimum. We have 130 square yards...still...after 1 year of trying for more land! Which means we have to get a waiver for one of the two laws and I sure don't want to shrink the classrooms. We tried for four months to get a waiver on the setbacks. Everyone was REAL nice, but no one would but a waiver in writing. The stalemate must be broken next week, so there will be more "Building and Engineer News" then. Site pictures and video can be viewed on: http://picasaweb.google.com/leighanne/RainbowPrimarySchoolSite

UPDATE:
Looks like we got a solution. I will report all when it is legal. Or "Indian legal" which is legal in one way but some bureaucrat may call it illegal or something like that. I'm never sure what is the current legal status because whenever I get that funny concerned look on my face, everyone switches to Telegu and starts talking too fast for me to understand. Rawalai... unn a dee... po pottee chessco... WHAT?

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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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