Education and Literacy Department
The ultimate goal of Education & Literacy Department is to promote education for human and institutional development. The activities of Education and Literacy Department begin with the respective community and school assessment which gives complete information in terms of social values, norms, literacy level, educational facilities enrollment of students, teachers capacity of teaching, learning environment, learning facilities etc. To ensure community participation in program activities, local Community Based Organizations (CBOs) / School Management Committees (SMCs) are formed / strengthened to meet HANDS ultimate goal of community development through quality education.
Projects
Districts
Tehsil
Union Councils
Villages/Urban Settlement
Covered Population
Beneficiaries
Service Models
Early Childhood Development (ECD)
The Early Childhood Development (ECD) Program seeks to ensure a good start in life for young children, especially for poor and underprivileged children aged 3-8 years. The overall goal of the program is to incorporate and institutionalize a range of replicable support for children’s overall development as confident, capable, creative and caring people. HANDS integrated community development model comprises of teachers’ training on ECD, training of Traditional Birth Attendants (TBA), training of LHW in ECD Program, health education of the community, referral strategy and safe learning environment for the children in ECD.
Objectives:
The objectives of ECD model are to:
- Improve confidence and creativity of target group.
- Improve social and emotional behavior of children.
- Improve access and quality of teaching and learning.
- Decrease dropout rates and grade repetition.
- Increase timely school enrollment.
- Increase school completion rates.
- Improve parent child relationships.
Multi-grade Teaching
Multi-grade teaching occurs in primary education when a teacher has to teach two or more primary school student grades in the same classroom. More general term and probably more accurate is that multi-grade teaching refers to the teaching of students of different ages, grades and abilities in the same group and same classroom.
Advantages:
- There will be less effort for a teacher and less money to spend in preparing visual aids because the teacher can utilize the visual aids for the entire class of multi-grade.
- The students will develop socializing skills because they will be dealing and interacting with their classmates which is higher or lower grade level than them.
- The students will learn advance topics especially lower grade level students.
Scholars Academy
The HANDS Scholars Academy Model is to ensure quality education for all. HANDS signs MoU with philanthropists/donors and District Government/ Education Department before intervening in schools and improves quality of education through training of teachers School Management Committees, raising awareness of community about education and implementing holistic approach of school management. School starts with pre-primary to grade five that focuses on Early Childhood Development. Infrastructure is ensured with provision of basic facilities like water, electricity/alternate energy, separate bathroom for girls & boys, furniture and safe play areas etc.
Public Private Partnership
HANDS Education & Literacy Program is working since 24 years to improve the literacy status of poor, marginalized children and adults through formal and non-formal education both in private and public sectors. So far HANDS Education & Literacy Program has managed more than 60 projects in last 2.5 decades.
Government of Sindh outsourced following 03 schools to HANDS (As Education Management Organization-EMO) under Public Private Partnership, PPP-Education (Node) located in Sukkur and Khairpur Districts:
GHS Bhellar Taluka Pano Aqil, District Sukkur.
GHS Kamal Khan Khan Indhar, Taluka Pano Aqil, District Sukkur.
GHS Pir Essa Taluka, Gambat, District Khairpur.
Objectives:
Following are the objective of Program:
- To provide quality education in remote areas of Sindh through academic enhancement, health education and providing life skill educations to make students long lives learners.
- To Build the capacity of school existing staff and new hiring to uplift the teaching and learning process
- To develop school management plan to monitor and supervise the government school in an effective manner.
- To make parent as partners’/community engagements in the development of school.
- Advocacy for awareness of the importance of education which results in enhanced enrollment.
HANDS launched Continuous Professional Development to enhance management / administrative skills of non-teaching staff, as well as, enrich teaching staff’s content knowledge of the relevant subjects and enhance their teaching pedagogical skills using a variety of tools, teaching methodology and alternate learning mechanisms to modernize the learning process.
The focus of this Component (CPD) is firmly on results – the benefits that professional development can bring you in the real world. HANDS Education program has conducted 32 trainings in session 2018-2019 on different topics and trained 1579 staff (Project staff, Primary & Secondary Teachers, admin & support staff) on different topics HANDS Education Program team in PPP Node Education Project is responsible to ensure formative and Summative assessments in each academic year.
Formative assessment: is an ongoing assessment it refers to a wide variety of methods to evaluate student comprehension, learning needs, and academic progress during a lesson, unit, or course.
Summative assessment: Evaluate student learning, skill acquisition, and academic achievement at the end of academic session/School year. Under EMO Schools Project, GHS Bhellar, Kamal Khan Indhar and Pir Essa successfully completed their first academic session 2018-2019 in Formative Assessment I & II 56% and 73% passed out and in Summative Assessment I & II 62% and 76% passed out.
Hands Contribution in Sustainable Development Goals
Success Story
Education of a girl is the education of nation
My name is Iqra and I belong to a small remote village Ilyas Abrejo, in district Matiari, Sindh. The total population of our village is about 2500 and most of the people in our village work either as laborer or agricultural labor to earn their living. There are 02 government primary boys’ and girls’ schools in our village but other basic facilities are not available in the village.
In 2003, HANDS with the financial support of Aga Khan Foundation, started an Early Childhood Education (ECE) program for children 3 to 5 years of age as part of Early Childhood Development (ECD). The project was named RCC – Releasing Confidence and Creativity and it was initiated in Government Primary schools in the village. A separate well equipped ECE classroom was established in each of the target school and Early Childhood Education program was started along with appointment of a trained certified teacher for ECE class. Prior to this program there was no concept of education of children of 3 – 5 years’ age group.
