Dominique Lapierre Education Program for Deprived Children through its Audrey Hepburn Memorial Bodhodaya Vidya Mandir series of rural schools seeks to provide comprehensive educational support to poor and needy children in the districts of Howrah, Hooghly, South 24 Parganas, Murshidabad, Cooch Behar and Birbhum through primary and semi-formal higher education, including vocational education to senior children with an effort to ensure employment-oriented learning. The project will give emphasis on advocacy and networking as a critical component of ensuring universalization of education in the project area. The project is expected to cover 2000 deprived children in from seven districts of West Bengal.
Till now, 10 primary schools, 1 middle school and 1 special school are operational reaching highest levels of education to 2000 students across seven districts. Session of two more schools are expected to start by April 2010.
Some of the strategic interventions include providing direct educational support to children through formal and non formal schools in remote areas; promoting parents and community involvement in management of schools; motivating the people to become more aggressive in terms of pressurizing government to implement the already existing codes and provisions and improving the general awareness of the people. This will go hand in hand with building and strengthening the movement for children’s educational rights and generating awareness at all levels for need for investment in education.
To ensure proper and efficient functioning, ABC has taken up a highly decentralized approach to management. In each of the school, a local management committee has been set up including representatives from teaches, local people and ABC management. This will ensure a highly participatory method in implementation with people taking direct interest in the development of their children.
As a part of the on going networking initiatives, the administrative responsibility of the schools have been handed over to a local NGO sharing likeminded vision and mission. Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) will be signed between ABC and the local partner NGO in related to the management of the schools.
Audrey Hepburn Memorial Bodhodaya Vidya Mandir, a network of primary and middle schools in remote rural villages of India aims to offer highest levels and quality in education to rural children so as to build confidence and competence in them to become responsible citizens of the future.
Special Education
Asha Bhavan practises and encourages inclusive education. However, to ensure that disabled children are brought at par in terms of their understanding on subjects, a separate special education cell is operational where children with varying disabilities are taught according to their skills and needs. Within ABC campus, nearly 50 children are undergoing special education from our trained special educators.
In addition to within the campus, ABC is ensuring that at least two teachers in all the schools under Audrey Hepburn Memorial Bodhodaya Vidya Mandir are trained in special education, thereby helping smooth integration of disabled children into regular schools. In 2009-2010, ABC is planning to have one fully dedicated special school within ABC campus to cater to the demand of the rural poor disabled children.
Supplementary Education Program
While Audrey Hepburn Memorial Bodhodaya Vidya Mandir offers formal education to rural children, the supplementary education program supported by AVTM, France is to utilize the existing public educational infrastructure to provide improved standards for children. Thus, all the beneficiaries under the project are enrolled in public schools but receiving specialized coaching and support under the project. The project has reached 1000 children in 30 villages of Howrah and South 24 Parganas district. All the children are receiving supplementary education under a network of rural based teachers and counselors.
The importance of the project can be understood from this fact that in last three years alone, the performance of the children has shown a remarkable improvement as indicated in their end of the year progress reports. The average increase has been 17 percent in numeric terms and the beneficiaries of this project is topping their respective classes in all the schools under the project area. Thus, the project has demonstrated that better educational standards are not a domain of the rich people and given an opportunity, poor and vulnerable children can come up in life with their own efforts and hard work.
Dominique Lapierre Education Program for Deprived Children through its Audrey Hepburn Memorial Bodhodaya Vidya Mandir series of rural schools seeks to provide comprehensive educational support to poor and needy children in the districts of Howrah, Hooghly, South 24 Parganas, Murshidabad, Cooch Behar and Birbhum through primary and semi-formal higher education, including vocational education to senior children with an effort to ensure employment-oriented learning. The project will give emphasis on advocacy and networking as a critical component of ensuring universalization of education in the project area. The project is expected to cover 2000 deprived children in from seven districts of West Bengal. 
