Pratham is India's largest non-profit organization working in the area of primary education. Our mission is “Every child in school and learning well”. Recognizing the importance of early interventions, we focus most of our programs on pre-school and primary education. We believe that by providing children with a good education, we create opportunities not only for them, but also for their families and communities.
Seeded by UNICEF in 1994, Pratham was founded in the slums of Mumbai by Dr. Madhav Chavan and Farida Lambay. Currently, we serve underprivileged children across 21 states in India. Our direct programs, including pre-schools and community libraries, reach out to more than 200,000 children per day in over cities in India. The Read India campaign led by Pratham aims to teach 60 million children of ages 6-14 how to read, write and do basic math by the end of 2009. More than 21 million children have already benefited from the first year of the campaign.
Pratham India was able to achieve significant successes in 2007-08. Some of the year’s highlights included the following:
#Read India reached over 21 million children in 358,233 villages across 19 states. Pratham also trained more than 375,000 volunteers and 877,000 teachers in its teaching techniques.
#Our Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) tested over 720,000 children across more than 16,000 villages, establishing a picture of learning levels across the country and spurring education reform. We also established the ASER Institute to institutionalize and strengthen the process of conducting ASER.
#Our urban direct programs benefited more than a million children across 15 states.
#Our pre-school (balwadi) programs benefited over 56,000 children, preparing them for regular school.
#More than 600,000 children borrowed books from our community libraries, developing their reading abilities
#Nearly 200,000 children benefited from our remedial learning programs run in communities. An additional 200,000 children learnt how to read, write and do math through Pratham programs run in 2,285 schools in urban centers across India.
#Pratham’s program for child laborers impacted 5,433 children across 7 states and influenced several national and state policies on child labor.
#187 computer assisted learning centers trained almost 70,000 children.
To LEARN MORE about Pratham visit:
www.pratham.org for Pratham global.
www.prathamusa.org for Pratham USA.
