The document summarizes the work of an organization called Shiksharth in Sukma, Chhattisgarh over 4 months. It discusses setting up subject labs and supporting the district administration's education initiatives. Some key accomplishments include teacher workshops on reading corners, establishing a science park, teaching in classrooms, and facilitating impact research. The organization is in the process of registering as a trust and expanding its team to further its goals of empowering communities through education.

1.  Started working in Sukma, Chhattisgarh in August, 2015 after 3 months of dilemma between comfort/convenience and need.
 Work primarily divided in 2 parts:
 Content Research to set up Subject Labs using local language, culture, resources and contextually relevant content
 Supporting District Administration in designing, executing their intervention towards improving quality of education and educa-
tional infrastructure/facilities
 Currently having a team of 4 people. Plan to recruit more team members to manage the program and launch a fellowship program to get more
people doing work on ground ( subject to the funding availability )
 4 month of work ranging across teaching in schools, promoting science education, figuring out schools to work in, identifying local support sys-
tem, engaging district officers in our work and implementing 3 initiatives on behalf of the district administration.
 Raised a fund of close to 4 Lakh through support of around 30+ friends and ex-colleagues with more in pipeline
 Registration of organization in progress.
Sukma
December 2015
Shiksharth Begins...
HIGHLIGHTS
After debating for 3 months between 4 districts – Kanker, Jagdalpur, Dantewada and Sukma we went
ahead with working in Sukma. Fortunately we had support from the district administration in all the 4
districts and it was a difficult choice to make between comfortable, more developed districts like Kanker
and Jagdalpur ; and risky, remote and extremely affected areas like Sukma and Dantewada where we
felt there was more need. And we decided to go with the need in Sukma instead of comfort in other
places.
Sukma, a Left Wing Extremism affected tribal belt is the southern most district of Chhattisgarh. It lacks
basic facilities like electricity, transport, phone network. With the borders of Andhra Pradesh and Odisha
nearby it is also the most naxal affected areas with 2 major blocks almost inaccessible to outsiders and
government officials.
However being a new district the government has been putting in a lot of hard work with simultaneous
focus around security and development. In terms of development they have been working a lot on infra-
structure and education to engage the local adivasi ( tribal) towards a constructive future.
More details @ http://sukma.gov.in/ .

2. The last 4 months have been mostly about knowing the place and people, identifying key stakeholders, identifying our work locations. The journey till now has been
exciting with many challenges that we need to be careful about from the point of view of our sustainability in the region. As the process of settling down in the new
place is on, we have managed to accomplish few tasks and kick start the program. A glimpse of the work done so far.
Glimpse of the 4 months..
With the vision to ‘empower every rural and tribal community to contribute towards excellent education for their children’ we will be setting up subject labs
using local resources and through community participation. Along with that the district administration of Sukma has also asked us to help with their initiatives
and programs in education. Hence our work also has collaboration with the local administration.
What do we work upon? :
Teachers workshops:
A reading corner is the first library of a school in a village. We started our stint in Sukma with Teacher Workshop
for 200+ teachers in Sukma on setting up reading corners in schools using low cost material
with focus on making it engaging with a strong tracking mechanism.
As part of the initiative we will be co-creating reading corners in
residential setups and primary/ middle schools in each cluster of the
district. We have already been successful in doing this in 10+ schools
so far.
Science Park: We set up a Science Park in Sukma in record time of 15 days which is first of its kind in
Chhattisgarh. The work revolved around identify the needs according to curriculum, learning level of the kids ,
designing the concept and implementation. As part of next step we are trying to address the language issues
with the concepts by simplifying the concepts of kids, also working on the teacher capacity development plan
and facilitating the student visit and their curriculum.
We are in classrooms: We have started teaching in the classrooms. The surprising element has been the response from
the kids. It has been much better than we had anticipated. According to the kids this is the first time they have been going
through full day classroom teaching . We have been focusing on making the classroom and learning interesting for them to be
able to build up the relationship. We have started with using contextual reference from kids village while teaching in form of
storytelling, sculpture art where we are using the existing knowledge of the kids in forest, livelihood, festivals, local art to
teach them their curriculum related concepts .

3. State Level Impact Research: We are
also facilitating Impact Research of key initia-
tives by education administration. The strength
of the research being the engagement of teach-
ers group to conduct that research where we are
facilitating the entire process.
Community relations and workshops: Being in the conflict zone and that too in the most affected
areas, our initial strategy of directly reaching out to the community has to be changed and we have planned to
get access inside the community through our own students where they introduce us to their people and facili-
tate the bonding . However we have decided to go ahead with our plan of community workshops in form of
story telling, folk art, music and dance and other activities with the help of local teachers who are familiar
with these practices. We are also collaborating with the local drama groups to conduct story telling work-
shops and sessions for our students.
 We are in the process of registering Shiksharth as a Trust with 6 trustees on board. We hope to get this done by the end of
January 2016.
 We are also on our toes to rope in mentors and guides as part of the Advisory board.
 Till date 34 people have come out to support the cause raising 3.70+ lakhs INR. We have more in the pipeline once we are
done with the registration and opening a bank account.
 Organisations like Azim Premji Foundation, Eklavya and Gyan Prabodhni have agreed to help us on our technical compe-
tencies. Our team member Vikas and Neeraj recently were in Bhopal to attend workshop organized by Eklavya on addressing
language issues in classrooms in rural and tribal areas. We are also in talks with students and professors from IIT Bombay to
help us in designing subject labs in the classrooms we work in.
 We plan to add 2 more members in the team who will help us with management and technical aspects of our work
 We will be launching Shiksharth Research Fellowship for the upcoming academic year which will give the youth a platform to
contribute to the education space in tribal areas. We are in process of designing the program. This will also help us in getting
committed and qualified team members for the cause.
 We plan to run a crowd funding program to raise funds for Shiksharth and your support will add a lot of momentum in the
vision.
 We will be designing a teacher development program for 500+ headmasters in the district and help the administration in
implementing it.
Organisation Status
Road Ahead...