IT PROJECT FOR TRIBAL DROPOUT CHILDREN

 

 

 

 

 

 ATTAPADY

  

    

A tribal development project of,             

SANTHI MEDICAL INFORMATION CENTRE

INTRODUCTION

Education is the most important instrument for human resource development and has a great significance. One cannot imagine education without schools as it plays a major role in moulding the basic ideas, habits and attitudes of the children, with a view to producing well balanced individuals. Schools provide not only education to the children but also keep them away from the social evils. The main problem in schools is the problem of stagnation and drop out phenomena. Education is the key that opens the door of life. It plays a pivotal role in social change and it brings perfections in human life, an upward mobility in social status, radical transformation in outlook and perception. Education is widely accepted as the essential tool for the attainment of the developmental goals and leads to political consciousness, awareness of rights and duties among the people of a nation and it is the most important instrument for human resource development and has a great significance in the context of developing countries.

 

The Indian Constitution identifies and provides special consideration for certain ethnic minority groups, traditionally referred to as tribes or tribals, as Scheduled Tribes (STs) who constitute around 8 per cent of the total population of the country. There are 573 STs living in different parts of the country. Most of the tribal communities have their own languages and culture different from the language spoken in the state where they are located. There are more than 270 such languages. Tribal communities in Kerala are scattered in different districts. Of these the highest concentration is located in wayanad, Idukki and Attappady block of Plakkad District. There are more than 37 tribal communities in Kerala.

 

Attappady is a rural development block nestling below the southwestern corner of the Nilgiri segment of the Western Ghats located in Mannarkkad Taluk in Palakkad district,. The only tribal block of Kerala, Attappadi is situated close to the famous Silent Valley National Park and is exclusively within the catchment area of Bhavani River, one of the east-flowing rivers of Kerala, and its tributaries – Siruvani and Kodungarapallam.

Spread over approximately 750 sq.km, Attappadi block comprises of three Panchayats namely Pudur, Agali and Sholayur which are further divided into 6 revenue villages namely, Padavayal, Pudur, Kottathara, Agali, Sholayur and Kallamala. It borders Tamil Nadu on the northern and eastern sides. The 249 km² Attappadi Reserve Forest is an informal buffer zone bordering the Silent Valley National Park to the West. 81 km² of this forest was separated to become most of the new 94 km² Bhavani Forest Range which is part of the 147.22 km² Silent Valley Buffer Zone formally approved by the Kerala Cabinet on 6 June 2007. The zone is aimed at checking the illicit cultivation of ganja, poaching and illicit brewing in areas adjacent to Silent Valley and help long-term sustainability of the protected area. Attappadi Block has the largest proportion of tribal population in Kerala (42.95%). Its sex ratio is also the lowest (1008) in Palakkad (Rural) district (which is 1068).

PROBLEM

Scheduled Tribes in India are generally considered to be ‘Adivasis,’ meaning indigenous people or original inhabitants of the country. The tribes have been confined to low status and are often physically and socially isolated instead of being absorbed in the mainstream Hindu population. Psychologically, the Scheduled Tribes often experience passive indifference that may take the form of exclusion from educational opportunities, social participation, and access to their own land. All tribal communities are not alike. They are products of different historical and social conditions. They belong to different racial stocks and religious backgrounds and speak different dialects. Discrimination against women, occupational differentiation, and emphasis on status and hierarchical social ordering that characterize the predominant mainstream culture are generally absent among the tribal groups. However, the mainstream population considers the general tribal population as primitive, technologically backward, and illiterate. Since the 16th century, the tribes have been perceived as sub-humans who live under primitive conditions. All the reasons are the route cause of the alienation of tribals in education and the Dropout. By giving more emphasis on other activities in the tribal hamlet, they are ignoring the value of education.

Reasons for Drop Out are,

1.  Low socio-economic status: – Tribals enjoy low socio-economic status. Miller (1988) has identified four major classes of variables such as cognitive variables, physical variables and motivational variables where disadvantaged learners show poor performance as compared with the advantaged groups.

 

2.  Tribal concepts of pleasure:- Tribals are giving more importance for their pleasure such as dance, music and other types of entertainments prevalent in the society.

 

3.  Existence of ethnic stereotypes: – Stereo typing is a natural and inevitable. It helps us to organize life. But such typing turns in to prejudice or stereotypes when based on little facts and it is used as a mechanism to establish the myth of racial or cultural superiority.

 

4.  Tribal concept of learning:– In most of the tribal cultures learning is an active pleasurable event mostly carried on among peers. But the existing system of education does not take in to account their learning style.

 

5.  Linguistic problems:-Tribal languages, except a very few, belong to Austro-Asiatic language family and are different from dominant non tribal languages of India which belong either to the Indo European or the Dravidian family. In most of the time tribals face acute problems in language.

 

6.  Problem of learning English: – Tribals need for English is great, they face problems in learning than their non-tribal counterparts. For tribals their typical use of regional languages interferes with English. For them English are 5th or 6th languages.

 

7.  Problems in learning to read:-Tribals have long oral tradition. Their culture is oral. Their history, myths and traditions are orally handed down from generation to generation. Most of the language does not have scripts of their own; their oral tradition still continues to exist.

 

8.  Psychological problems: – Financial problems of the tribals always make the tribals in a very depressed condition. They have lots of wants and but the means to satisfying them is very less. It leads to many psychological issues

 

9.  Academic and administrative problems: – Even though the number of programmes for the upliftment of tribal education is many, the percentage of people receiving these benefits is very less. Administrative authorities are always showing very neutral attitude towards the education of the tribals.

 

SOLUTION

Santhi medical Information Centre along With Talrop has developed a program to teach these drop out children of Attapady computer coding and other software related classes with free of cost and develop employment opportunities to these children in the IT field.  We are planning to educate 30 children as a part of trial run to our project and in the future we are planning to build a IT Park in Attapady exclusively for the tribes. We will also appoint teachers to teach English language to these children as they need to study English to understand the IT courses.

Already, new and greater demands are being made as to the core qualifications of individuals, as well as to their understanding and knowledge of the consequences of the introduction of information technology for the work and organisation of a company. Companies are no longer forced to gather all their functions in one place. The knowledge-intensive functions such as development and marketing can be sited in countries where the labour market can supply highly educated employees, whilst production itself can be moved to low wage countries. The result is the efficient handling, processing, co-ordination and administration of company resources, which is decisive for the competitiveness of the company.In a society which is becoming increasingly dependent on information and the processing of knowledge, great demands are therefore made that the individual should have a solid and broad educational foundation on which to build.

Talrop which is an recognized IT firm based on Kochi, Kerala will assist us on this project and we will adopt the “TECHIES PARK” https://talrop.com/techies-park/ concept which have implemented by Talrop successfully in many schools, in which they create a small IT office which give the same experience of working in a IT park and students will be trained in this centre, we have rented a room to build one small Techie Park to the children of Attapady, in which we can train 30 children at first and we can access how the children are progressing in this project.

https://youtu.be/t7eVK4u6bjI here is an example of Techies Park implemented by Talrop.

ABOUT SANTHI

Santhi Medical Information Centre (SMIC) http://www.santhimedicalinfo.org/  has been registered as a Society (Non- Government) with the Registrar of Societies (Registration No:496/97) dated 24-09-1997 under the Travancore Cochin Cultural Scientific and Charitable Societies Act No. 12 of 1955 with Agriculture, ,Drinking Water, ,Education & Literacy, Health & Family Welfare and Tribal Affairs as the Key sectoral issues for its activities. Mrs Uma Preman is the Secretary, with Ms Nisha Ramesh as President and Ms Komala Haridas as Treasurer. Its Head Office is in Guruvayoor, Thrissur District, Kerala. It is also registered under the FCRA registration Act 2010 under the Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India) FCRA Reg. No: 052900372. SMIC works in eight districts of Kerala: Kasaragod, Kannur, Wayanad, Malappuram, Palakkad, Thrissur, Ernakulam and Pathanamthitta.From the initial strength of single staff Santhi has developed into a full-fledged charity institution with 85 staff.