THE CASE STUDY ON PRATHAM

CASE STUDY ON PRATHAM

Pratham started in the slums of Mumbai in 1994, as a result of the vision of a couple of committed individuals! The two, after much deliberation, decided to tackle the problem of education headlong. They could see only one way of correcting this problem and that was to involve the people of Mumbai to help the government in its quest of universalizing primary education. UNICEF parented the birth of Pratham and continued fostering it for the next three years. A Public Charitable Trust was accordingly formed by the Commissioner of the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai together with the association of several prominent citizens of the city.

Today, the parental role of Pratham has been taken over by the ICICI Bank, a leading private sector bank of India. Pratham activities have spread to 21 states; assistance has come from the local governments, leading corporate houses and the local citizens. Many local trusts and governing bodies have been formed to oversee the smooth operations of Pratham activities; committed individuals from every walk of life have chipped in with their bit.

Friends of Pratham have started Pratham chapters in the USA, UK and the Middle East, to promote and support the Pratham cause in India. Overseas funding agencies such as the OXFAM NOVIB, NPL, AIF have also been sufficiently impressed by the work of Pratham, to start funding certain Pratham activities in a few states.

Since inception the goal of the Pratham team has been to ensure that "every child is in school ….. and is learning well". Over this 9 year period Pratham has reached out to a million children. An accelerated learning method, in which an unlettered child starts reading and computing basic mathematics in 3 weeks, has been in use since late 2002 and has taught over 160,000 children since then to become literate.

In 2000, The Global Development Network Award, sponsored by the World Bank / Government of Japan was awarded to Pratham. Pratham was named as one of the top three "most innovative development projects".

Four key elements make Pratham's work unique. Comprehensive Geographical Outlook, All Encompassing, Replicable and Strong Foundation.

Pratham takes a total geographical approach, be it a city, a rural block or a taluka. The "complete coverage" approach, coupled with close links and co-operation with the government, distinguishes it from other non-governmental organizations.

The organization is based on a triangular partnership: the government, the corporate sector and the citizens. In each city, the corporate leaders have taken the lead, the government has responded by opening its school and sharing its facilities, and the community volunteers, mostly young enthusiastic women from slums, implement the Pratham programmes.

The model is simple to implement and easily replicable. No immovable assets are acquired unless a donor specifically requests and the need is clearly established. Administrative costs are kept low. Consequently, Pratham Network has spread to 21 states across India.

The extensive network in the slum area enables Pratham to layer other activities, such as health and computer education, at a minimum additional cost of delivery. It also gives the researchers and academicians an opportunity to collect primary data.
BALWADI BY PTATHAM
Universalization of pre-school education is an important strategy for achieving universalization of primary education. If every child can avail of some kind of early childhood education, the chances are high that the child will go on to regular school. Moreover, the pre-school exposure will enhance and strengthen the child's subsequent school performance, in terms of achievement and attendance.
• Targets pre-school children in the 3-5 years age group
• Aims at exposing unreached children from low-income families to early childhood education
• Located either at a municipal school, community space, place of worship or a teacher's home
• Each class has around 18 children with an instructor from the local community and runs for 2-3 hours a day
WHY PRATHAM
Various estimates indicate that, in the primary school age group, there are about 70-100 million children (which is about 50% of all Indian children in this age group), who are not enrolled in schools. Even though, it is now enshrined as a fundamental right, in reality Universal Elementary Education continues to remain a very distant dream. It is estimated that:
• Of 190-200 million children in the 6-14 age group in India, about 72 million children are out of school of which about 13 million have never been to school and about 59 million have been to school but have dropped out prior to class VIII.
• By Std X, 70% of all children enrolled would have dropped out of the school system. India has one of the highest incidences of child labor in the world.
The severity of the problem and its potential fallout in the very near future has made developmental economists led by Dr. Amartya Sen, to powerfully argue that the very sustainability of our economic growth may be threatened, if we do not urgently invest in basic school education. It is hard to understate the impact school education or the lack of it can have on labor productivity, income growth, quality of democratic functioning, population growth, sustainability of political and economic reforms, health, law and order, environment etc. Simply put, we believe that if in the 2l century, more half of our children continue to be out of school, then expectations of India developing rapidly are quite premature.
Home to a billion people with quarter of the world’s poor, accounting for a sixth of
world’s population and host to second largest primary education system in the world — India significantly influences the world’s progress in achieving the Millennium
Development Goals on time!!
Government Efforts
India is responding to the challenge of Universal Elementary Education. In 2000, Government of India launched the Sarva Shiktha Abhiyan (SSA) in response to a global and national need for India to achieve on schedule the twin Millennium Development Goals (MDG) related to universal and inclusive primary education. SSA has the following goals:
• All children in 6-14 year age group to be enrolled in school by 2003
• All children complete five years of education by 2007
• All children complete eight years of education by 2010
Though running behind schedule, SSA has made considerable progress on access and enrollment indicators. Increased political will for universalizing elementary education is thus reflected by an increased GDP spending of 4.5% from the 3% before 2000. While education continues to be a state subject, now the central government is putting in Rs. 100-120 bn.
The Prathani Movement has been a steadfast partner and catalyst since 1994, in this
Indian effort for realizing the right of evemy child to basic education!
2. The Pratham Movement
Ten years ago Pratham was born in Mumbai, out of an idea to create a ‘societal mission’ for education - “To ensure that by 2010, Every child in India is in school and learning well”. The legal identity of Pratham as a Charitable Trust is a formality that holds together the mission. Pratham has grown trying to balance ‘movement’ and ‘project’ characters which are fundamentally different, if not opposite in nature. Both these characters are essential to Pratham. As a movement, Pratham is inclusive, chaotic, impatient, and spirited. As a project, Pratham strives to reign in the chaos by laying down essential broad systemic frameworks of accounting, assessment, and monitoring.
The Pratham Movement (www.pratham.org) is a coalition between community volunteers (who are the grass-root workers, mainly women, and who form the real engines of this movement), corporate leaders, academics, members of the local and central governments, NRIs and qualified professionals from the corporate and non-profit world.
Since 1994, Pratham has spread to 50 cities across 12 states in India to ensure that children in India are in school and learning well.
2.1. The Pratham Model
Pratham recognizes that the primary education is fundamentally the responsibility of the government/s and that the greatest improvement is likely to come when the government/s efficiency and effectiveness improves. Pratham therefore strives to make the government system more effective by working at multiple levels with it. The underlying philosophy is to supplement the government and not supplant it.
In areas in which Pratham operates, we want to see that every child is in school and learning and where this is impractical; children should be in some form of educational net and learning. In areas, where Pratham does not have a direct presence nor is it practical for us to have a direct presence, we try to have a catalytic impact on the government and non-governmental organizations through demonstrative advocacy. All Pratham programs are designed to ensure that (a) enrollment in school increases (b) dropout from schools decrease (c) influencing both the above, learning in schools and communities should increase (d) where impractical like child labor, take education to children and (e) bridge the digital divide.
Pratham’s interventions are therefore based on the following three principals:
• Comprehensive geographical outlook: Complete coverage approach, be it city or rural block
• Tm-i-partite approach: Corporates, Civil society and Government

• Replicable, Scalable and Measurable: Simple to implement and low cost programs, e.g. no movable assets
Pratham’s model is thus based on supporting Government’s efforts of UEE arid improving efficiency of its investments through three well defined phases of: 1) Demonstration, 2) Catalysis and 3) Advocacy
Demonstration phase:
Pratham firstly demonstrates large scale model of basic literacy for all in disadvantaged communities. This serves to break community and government mindsets on literacy constraints in children from weaker sections and gives Pratham credibility for further action. Civic sense is initiated in this phase as Pratham’s interventions are based in the community and run by community volunteers. This phase is the platform for subsequent catalytic phase during which community participation is built as a sustainable solution for
UEE.
Catalytic phase:
This phase builds upon the momentum and awareness generated in the community towards education issues in the demonstration phase. During this phase, Pratham focuses on three types of activities
I) Catalyzing community based campaigns in areas like reading, math, science, mother’s literacy. These campaigns are of intense activity packed in a short duration (typically 2-3 months during summer or diwali break). The campaigns are structured to rally the participation of different stakeholders (government, parents, elders, children) in the community around an issue and help in initiating volunteerism in the community. Moreover, concrete outcomes/impact are demonstrated during this short phase thus showing that change is possible. Finally the campaign helps to highlight and bring to fore a particular issue in the community. Pratham has successfully catalyzed successfully conducted such Reading and Science Campaigns for 50,000+ children in Bihar, Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh
2) Mass training of government teachers and master trainers in accelerated reading and math techniques. Based on the success of the demonstration in the earlier phase, Pratham gets invited by state governments to train its teachers and/or master trainers in these techniques. For e.g. in Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh, Pratham trained the state primary teachers in the reading, math and pre-school learning techniques. In Bihar, the government master trainers and the para-teachers were trained.
3) Strengthening local structures for sustainability of the UEE impact. Here a) relevant local structures are identified, b) contextual capacity building mechanisms for the institutions are developed, c) mechanisms for building community participation are evolved and d) advocacy strengths of these institutions are built to initiate dialog between government and civil society. Sensitive socio-cultural issues like gender bias are addressed during this phase as part of the community action. For e.g. in Gujarat, Pratham is working with Village Education Committees in 3000 villages to activate and strengthen them for participation in education activities and outcomes in the village.
Advocacy phase:
Pratham influences policy debates through its direct involvement in the National Advisory Council and SSA Governing Council at the national level and state planning bodies and state SSA commissions at state levels. Successful demonstration of community based literacy models are showcased to the Government for 1) replication and
2) influencing policies. During the catalytic phase, advocacy efforts focus on policy/practice changes for community participation in education interventions.
Since 2005, Pratham has catalyzed a unique national effort of public action — ASER (Annual Status of Education Report). As part of ASER, citizens, NGOs, institutes and corporate bodies across 25 states in India will get together each year until 2010 to collectively track the progress of education outcomes in their states, districts, villages and cities. The results will be discussed with government officials, citizen groups and civil society bodies at state and district levels to formulate action plans. ASER 2005 reached over 200,000 children in 13 states across India covering 485 out of India’s 603 districts (covering 84% of rural India). The effort was compiled by 20,000 volunteers from over 800 civil society organizations. The report was released by Dy. Director, Planning Commission, India.
2.2. Emphasis on processes
Pratham’s powerful mission, ‘Every child in school and learning well’ attracted very diverse volunteers. Amongst them were consultants from Mckinsey & Co., who did a study of Pratham at its inception. Since then, Mckinsey has supported Pratham in drawing up its strategic plans and in setting up processes to enhance Pratham’s effectiveness and its ability to rapidly expand. Recently, performance measurement processes & indicators were standardized by Pratham. Further, Pratham had also engaged Give Foundation, an NPO offering consulting services to other NPOs, to standardize accounting processes, MIS and install relevant software. All our Trusts are monitored by reputed auditors.
2.3. Mode of Work
Pratham recognizes that the primary education is fundamentally the responsibility of the government/s and that the greatest improvement is likely to come when the government/s efficiency and effectiveness improves. Pratham, therefore strives to make the government system more effective by working at multiple levels with it. The underlying philosophy is to supplement the government and not supplant it.
In areas in which Pratham operates, we want to see that every child is in school and learning and where this is impractical, children should be in some form of educational net and learning. In areas, where Pratham does not have a direct presence nor is it practical for us to have a direct presence, we try to have a catalytic impact on the government and non organizations through demonstrative advocacy. All Pratham programs are designed to ensure that (a) enrollment in school, increases (b) dropout from schools decrease (c) influencing both the above, learning in schools and communities should increase (d) where impractical like child labor, take education to children and (e) bridge the digital divide. By learning we imply that, at the very least:
Every child is able to read paragraphs fluently
Every child is able to write sentences on one’s own.


Every child is able to do addition, subtraction, multiplication & division.
Every child has access to children’s books with which he or she can augment her
knowledge and learning ability.
Pre-school Program
Need Government estimates indicate that out of 100 children in primary school age, 11 never enter schools and 70 drop out before Class X. Pre-school education is an important strategic solution to this problem. Basically, it strengthens the foundation, catalyses 3-5 year old economically underprivileged children to enroll in schools and vastly improves the ability of the children to understand the Class I-IT syllabus. This results in a learning child with much higher chances of retention. In most States in the country, pre-schools are not funded by government and are therefore not available to the economically backward.
Pratham solution (Baiwadis) Pratham establishes needs for Baiwadis through surveys and mobilizes apprentices from within the community who they train to be pre-school teachers. This way community involvement and teacher commitment is ensured. Balwadis are established and run by volunteers from within the community. Pratham officials monit6r quality and the curriculum of the program.
Benefits : Taps children at the a very young age and inculcates interest in learning. Improves enrollment and retention in the long run.
In-school Remedial Programs
Need : The high drop-out rate of children (50% by Class IV) is because of the high number of children with learning difficulties. Government Schools do not provide for remedial education and other support systems for such children. There is a clear need for special attention to such children.
Pratham Solution (Balsakhi) : Pratham enters into understandings with local government authorities and school officials. Pratham’s teachers during school time, are given the responsibility of giving special classes to the children with remedial learning requirements. Prathamteachers are trained to impart foundational skills to these children. Over the past few years it has come to the conclusion that the high drop-out rate amongst children is because of their inability to read and do basic maths. A new technique for accelerated learning to read tremendously improves the ability of children to read. This new technique is being used in the In-school Balsakhi programs. Refer to the section on Read India for details.
Benefits: Improves reading and comprehension of children and thereby retention. Library and Community Learning Center


Need : Developing and cultivating a reading habit is essential to the learning process. Development of this habit also intensifies children’s interest in education. Children in communities do not have access to books and also support for clarifying their difficulties on curriculum.
Pratham Solution : Create libraries within the community itself with carefully chosen engaging and meaningful children’s books that open their minds and with a Balsakhi who motivates children to build a reading habit though essay writing, reading competitions, story telling etc., as also help them with their academic activities. Refer to the later section on Read India Campaign for greater details.
Benefits : Opens childrens minds, develops reading and learning habit, generates excitement about the learning process and strengthens communities ownership of the solution.
Out-of-school Programs
Need : There are tens of millions of children in the primary school age who have never been to school or have dropped out. A large number of these children are working children or child labor. They. have one of the most difficult lives. Education is a powerful way of empowering them. While it is possible to get some of these children to schools, often it is not practical and some other form of educational net is required to give them basic educational skills.
Pratham Solution (Bridge Course and Outreach Programs) : Create bridge courses and outreach programs designed to reach out to this segment. The bridge course attempts to impart age-relevant education and get children admitted in schools, while the outreach program designed specifically for child labor tries to take basic school education to the working child.
Benefits : Mainstreams out of school children, imparts basic educational competency, intensifies the desire for education and empowers them in difficult conditions.
Computer Assisted Learning
Need : Lack of use of technology in the bottom of the pyramid to enhance learning & lack of IT familiarity spawning the digital divide in schools catering to economically under-privileged children.
Prathani Solution: Create low cost models which can be replicated and sustainably run in communities and schools using computers to teach children basic school competencies of language and maths. Develop local language softwares for identification and familiarity.
Benefits : Increases learning level through use of technology, increases interest in schools and increases familiarity with technology.


All programs are for economically underprivileged children, mainly in economically backward urban and rural areas, Each program unit has an average of around 20 children and instructors are young women from the local community, who are at least educated till Std X. Space is provided by the community and classes are held either in municipal school, community space or teacher’s home.
Pratham, works in collaboration with the local government to improve access to schools and the quality of learning in them. It does not itself build schools but strives to strengthen existing government school system. Pratham closely works with the government at multiple levels and all attempts are directed towards ensuring that (a) enrollment improves i.e., more and more children go to school (b) attendance and learning improves in schools and (c) that drop out from schools are minimized.
Pratham currently serves over 200,000 children directly while there are an estimated 70 million children in the primary school age who are either not in school or need educational support. Given the size of the problem, there is a need to dramatically scale efforts both at the direct and catalytic levels by government as well as non-governmental bodies. Pratham has therefore increasingly been trying to have a greater impact through catalytic influence on various stakeholders of the primary education system. An important element of catalytic impact is advocacy through demonstration. (Refer to Advocacy section for more details)
Pratham has also been continuously innovating its delivery mechanisms to have a more relevant and scalable impact on children and some of these innovations have been instrumental in enabling it to have a catalytic impact. The Read India Campaign, which involves an innovative technique designed to make children learn reading in a very short time and a library component that strengthens and develops reading habit amongst economically underprivileged children, is a step in this direction. (Refer to the Read India Campaign for greater detail)
2.3. Achievements
Since 1994. Pratham has demonstrated, that it can reach out to the grassroots and get underprivileged children in both urban and rural settings to school and learning. Prom a humble start in the slums of Mumbai, currently, about 10,000 volunteers of the Pratham family were in the field, in 29 centers across 10 states in India, reaching out to over 200,000 children. Till date we have reached out to over a million children.
Pratham is highly cost effective and spends in the region of Rs. 500/- to serve the basic educational needs of one child per year. Prathams ability to partner with the government and improve the tatters effectiveness and efficiency has been the cornerstone of its work. In the process, Pratham has affirmatively and emphatically answered the following questions:



Can one work with the government?
Can NGOs achieve scale and have a comprehensive mass approach?
Is it possible to mobilize a community to create sustainable solutions?
2.4. Uniqueness — The Pratham Magic
I
There are four key elements, which make our work unique and special.
Pratham takes a total geographical approach, be it a city, a rural block or a taluka. The “complete coverage” approach, coupled with close links and co-operation with the government, distinguishes it from other non-governmental organizations.
The organization is based on a triangular partnership: corporate sector, government and the citizens. In each city, corporate leaders have taken the lead, the government has
responded by opening its schools and sharing its facilities, and community volunteers, ( mostly young enthusiastic women from the slums, implement the programs. “Eveiy
Pratham programme has three basic elements: it is linked to the municipal/government school system; it can be reproduced on a massive scale, it draws new people into its existing network. “Jacques Hallak Assistant Director General, 1999 — UNESCO.
The Pratham model is simple to implement and easily replicable. No immovable assets are acquired unless a donor specifically requests and the need is clearly established. Administrative costs are kept low. The simplicity of the model also allows it to be massively scalable — “This project is considered to be rare in that it is both ambitious and successful and a blend of corporate initiative and community efforts that is worth emulating elsewhere.” Ministiy of Human Resource Development. Department of Education. Government of India.
Given the extensive network in the slum areas, it is easy to layer other services (health,
computhr education) at a minimum additional cost of delivery.
2.5. Management
Unique Volunteer Base - Pratham has managed to mobilize nearly 10,000 grassroot community volunteers (predominantly women), across India, to take charge of the educational needs of their community. These young women exhibit an amazing and infectious ‘can do’ attitude, which truly is what the Pratham Movement is about. It is these courageous women who make things happen and are the engines of the Pratham Movement.
Structure of the Movement - Pratham operates its programs through decentralized initiatives in the form of local trusts all over the country. This helps decentralize the implementation and build ownership at the local level both of which have proved critical for our rapid expansion. All the trusts jointly take operational decisions via the governing council and national executive.

Pratham initiatives begin, typically, at the behest of a committed individual who wishes to take the Pratham model to his home state, or a corporate leader interested in developing his part of India or local governments who are impressed by Pratham’ s work. The Pratham family responds by sending key implementers, provides program training and support material and gives managerial guidance. With the co-operation, commitment and support of enthusiastic volunteers from the local community, the government and corporates, Pratham thus sets up a trust in a new area and serves the children there.
Apart from its operational trusts, which implement the programs, the Pratham Movement has also spawned three other initiatives that do not directly implement the programs, but provide a national level support to Pratham operations in India, The three initiatives are Pratham USA (PUSA), Pratham UK and Pratham India Education Initiative (PIEI). PUSA is based out of Houston, Texas, and rallies non resident Indians (NRTs) and other well-wishers to support Pratham operations in India. Pratham UK, based out of London, plays a similar role in UK and Europe. Pratham India Education Initiative (PIEI) has been set up as a national resource by the Pratham network & corporate supporters in June, 2002. The role of PIEI is to facilitate and support each of the local trusts across India with scale activities like fundraising, branding, IT systems, financial processes, measurement indices etc.
2.6. Read India Campaign
From “Learning to Read” to “Reading to Learn” for a Million Children
Reading is the first essential step for access to accumulated knowledge. Without reading, there is no writing either and without them the learning process is severely handicapped. Yet, a Pratham survey of 130,000 slum households of Mumbai and other urban centers of Maharashtra show that:
• Only about 23 per cent of children can read paragraphs with varied fluency,
• 33 per cent can read words, but not sentences,
• 27 per cent can identify the letters of the alphabet, but not sentences,
• The remaining 17 per cent cannot read at all.
It is noteworthy that over 90% of those tested attend schools- both government and private and that some of the children were in 4 and 5 standards.
The situation in the rest of India, especially among the poorer population whose children attend government schools is not much different. Maharashtra is recognized to be a more progressive Indian state, the state of affairs is probably much worse in the North & East and about the same in South. Pratham surveys with over 200,000 children across various states in India validate this. Pratham is committed to not only getting children in school, but also in ensuring that they are learning well. The survey results therefore acted as a catalyst to re-double our efforts to ensure that out of school children not only go to school but that they also learn well while at school. Pratham estimates that out of the nearly 150 million children who attend Indian schools, about 75 million cannot read. These children
will not complete grade VII education. Half of them who can barely identify alphabets will dropout before completing even four years of education. Thus, dropout was being significantly influenced by lack of reading and consequent lack of comprehension and drop in interest. How can this alarming situation be changed? How fast can the change occur?
2.7. Pratham Innovation — Learning to Read
Pratham has recently innovated and tested on a large scale a technique that combines different approaches to learning to read. The technique combines the philosophy of child- centric learning with ‘reading aloud’ stories, use of the phonetic ‘barakhadi’ chart for coding and decoding sounds, use of rhyming words, and an activity to ‘say what you want and write what you want’ . The end result is very encouraging. Children aged seven and above who can read words or letters but not paragraphs can be taught to read with comprehension in 6-8 weeks, with this cost effective technique.
This conclusion is based on work done with nearly 90,000 children in linguistically and culturally diverse regions of India where Pratham’s own capacities vary. These areas include urban and rural areas of Maharashtra and Gujarat, and urban centers of Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, and Karnataka. Overall aggregated All India data shows very encouraging results.
Details Data of 2000 Data of 2006
Can read easy texts
11 %
56 %

Can either read easy words or recognize
some alphabets
26 %
39 %

Cannot recognize even a few alphabets
33 %
5 %

TOTAL ChILDREN TESTED
89,264
86,375


It is also observed that continuing the focused work leads to most children reading fluently and writing what they wish (although grammatically incorrect and with several spelling mistakes) in the following 4-8 weeks. Considering that this the first time they are doing so, the progress is indeed stunning.
It seems possible to accelerate the learning of a child who knows nothing or merely recognizes several alphabets to learn to read fluently in about 20-25 working days with about 2 hours of class every day. This base is then subsequently strengthened through reading and writing practice using stories and other interesting reading material.
The new technique of Pratham and the encouraging results indicate that a voluntary movement on a massive scale can address the issue of reading writing skills among children of India in a short time. This is what Professor Jalaluddin an acknowledged literacy expert of India, calls the movement for Learning to Read.

2.8. Need for a Library — Reading to Learn
From learning to read, the child’s ability to comprehend and learn by reading has to grow. Reading skills and fluency are only the first step. To truly revolutionize learning patterns we need to build children’s reading skills and to lead them to better reading, writing and a deeper understanding of subject matter. The basic foundation to the acquisition of such knowledge is the reading of books and materials. Books should be available in local areas, to maintain and improve the skills acquired. Across India, there are few to no libraries in slum communities. Even if children can read, how then can they master this skill without access to interesting, engaging and meaningful books?
Further, good quality children’s books, both in English as well as in the Indian languages are in very short supply. Not only are books not available, even when they are available,
their distribution is highly restricted. Libraries in government schools, where economically underprivileged children mainly go, are hardly used because teachers are afraid to let children handle books. This increases the severity of the problem further.
Pratham intends to respond to this need by establishing 5,000 libraries in slum communities throughout the country serving over a million children. Pratharn is experimenting with a variety of approaches to provide books to children from mobile bag libraries’ to nodal libraries in the community itself. For this purpose, Pratham will• also design, translate and develop high quality children’s books to be placed in the libraries.
Emphasis on processes - Pratham’s powerful mission, ‘Every child in school and learning well’ attracted very diverse volunteers. Amongst them were consultants from Mckinsey & Co., who did a study of Pratham (and published an article on Pratham in the Mckinsey Quarterly, 2001). Since then, Mckinsey has been helping Pratham draw up its strategic plans and to set up processes to enhance Pratham’s effectiveness and it’s ability to rapidly expand. Recently, performance measurement processes & indicators were standardized by Pratham in consultation with Mckinsey & Co. Further, Pratham had also engaged Give Foundation, an NPO offering consulting services to other NPOs, to standardize accounting processes, MIS and install relevant software. All our Trusts are monitored by reputed auditors.
Corporate Involvement:
Pratham was established as a Public Charitable Trust by the Commissioner of the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai, UNICEF and several prominent citizens of the country in 1994. UNICEF parented Pratham during the initial three years. In 1997, ICICI Bank, a private sector bank in India, assumed the parental role. Since then, the involvement of corporate India has significantly increased. Today, the board of Pratham India Education Initiative consists of eminent leaders of the corporate world. The board oversees, supervises and guides the progress of the Pratham Movement and the board members, through their respective companies, have also committed financial, infrastructural and human resources support to the Pratham Movement.
Some Corporate supporters of Pratham: ABN AMRO, British Airways, British Gas, Citibank, ICICI, Colgate, HSBC, ITC, Johnson and Johnson, Standard Chartered
Foundations/NGOs supporting Pratham: America India Foundation, CIDA Canada, i2Foundation, MS Dell Foundation, Novib (Oxfam Netherlands), Save the Children, UK, UNICEF
2.9. Finances — 2003-04
Pratham is now one of the largest NGOs in the field of primary education in India. Yet Pratham impacts just over 200,000 children. It is estimated that there are, in India, over 70 million underprivileged children, in need of primary education assistance. Clearly, if India is to achieve its stated goal of universalisation of primary education by 2010, there is a need to dramatically scale efforts both at the direct and catalytic levels by government as well as non-governmental bodies. That calls for resource mobilization of a higher order.
Pratham needs assistance in funding to pursue its mission. Even though Pratham is very concerned about issues of sustainability and envisages the community and the government eventually taking over its activities, but until such time, Pratham is in need of support to finance its current operations as well as to undertake new initiatives. At present, Pratham’s sources of committed funds are split almost equally by value between one large international donor (NOVIB — Oxfam, Netherlands), a dozen eminent Indian corporates, and a voluntary retail fundraising organization based in the USA.
Currently, Pratham is reaching out to the Indian states of Maharasthra, Raj asthan, Gujarat, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Assam and Tamil Nadu.