Nidan comes forward with helping hands to fire affected people of Samastipur

A total of 135 families out of 274 families of village Balbhadrapur-Khajuri, Paswan and Bhumihar Tola of Kalyanpur Block of Samastipur were badly affected due a major fire that broke out on 22nd May’14. Their houses were totally burnt due to this fire and these families were rendered homeless. They neither had a place to take shelter or food to eat.  In that demanding situation, Nidan came forward with a helping hand to these families.

Now 133 of these affected families are residing in the temporary homes made up of tarpauline sheets, bamboos and dry grass. Families are having food security also as food grains have been distributed by the state Govt and dry ration by Nidan-Plan. Now drinking water is also available to them as 8 hand-pumps were repaired by the project Nidan-Plan and 4 bore wells were installed. All the affected families have overcome the acute crisis of food, water and shelter that they were facing after the fire incident. Local people and members from CBOs also came forward to help the families by providing clothes and food grains.

Nidan-Plan formed a Rapid Assessment Team that conducted meetings with the community people to assess their needs. The community response was to provide them with utensils, clothes, medicines, repair of hand pumps & shelter by providing them bamboo and tin sheets. A separate meeting was conducted with children also to assess their needs. Children said that they require clothes, bags, books, notebooks and stationeries, which were duly provided to them.

People of that area and of nearby areas have been deputed for having a close observation & monitoring of the situation so that any unwanted situation is prevented. A meeting was conducted with DPO & CDPO and they were requested to extend extra support to the children of the affected families .  Health camps were also organized by Nidan-Plan at PHC.

CO of Kalyanpur block distributed Rs. 4200.00, food (50 kgs of rice and 50 kgs wheat), 2 litres of kerosene oil and plastic sheets for shed to each effected family. RED CROSS Society distributed bucket, dhoti and bed sheet to each affected family. Nidan Plan supported with dry ration for 4 days and Tarpauline sheet to each family and repaired 8 hand pumps and four temporary sheds were arranged for 2-3 days.

Nidan-Plan distributed extra dry ration to Pregnant and Lactating mothers, set of utensils to 133 affected families apart from school bags, stationeries and set of books to 125 school children, and installed 4 bore wells. Sanitary napkins were distributed among girls and women of affected families by community contribution by SHG’s members.

Nidan-Plan conducts Government Teachers’ Training at Patna

To enhance the quality of teachers’ skill, Nidan-Plan conducted a Government Teachers’ Training on RIVER Multi-grade, Multi-level (MGML) methodology with the help of RISHI VALLEY Trainers at Hotel Clarke, Patna from June 16-20. The program was quite successful as several teachers took this opportunity to get trained by experts on different aspects of teaching. A MGML teacher is one who, in a single classroom space, teaches children of different ages and varying abilities, who would normally belong to different grade levels. A multi-grade classroom, also known as mixed age classroom or vertically grouped classroom, accommodates children of different ages with varied learning backgrounds.  Rishi Valley Institute for Educational Resources (RIVER) is the teacher training and resource development wing of Rishi Valley Rural Education Centre.

After two decades of intense work, RIVER has developed a unique structure for elementary education that consists of a network of Satellite Schools where a community-based curriculum is taught by village youth trained in especially designed multi-level methodologies; where the academic curriculum is graded for individual levels of learning, grounded in up-to-date information, and framed in the local idiom and, finally, where the curriculum is integrated with activities.

Following are the salient features of schools in RIVER model:

Schools should be free from fear, full of colour and joy inside and green and beautiful outside.

Have a learning-ladder, made up of small learning-steps, that enables self-paced Individual learning.

Promote cooperative learning through peer support.

Stress on activity -based experimental learning through craft, games, song and drama.

Integrate local culture and values of conservation into the curriculum.

Encourage teachers to design creative teaching-learning material and share it with other teachers.

RIVER’s unique MGML learning methodology for classes 1 to 5 has been extended through the transcreation of multi-level materials and through teacher education programmes for resource persons to formal and non-formal schools in several of India’s linguistically diverse states, where the MGML programmes are referred to as Activity-Based-Learning (ABL) methodologies.