Ekal Vidyalayas – The silent reformer of rural and tribal India.
Ekal Vidyalayas begin as a movement to provide systematic education & modern development for children of rural and tribal India. The major activity attempted in this absolute people’s movement was to run one-teacher schools known as Ekal Vidyalaya. The aim was to establish all over India, in the remotest rural & tribal villages. With the help of this scheme we can take the education to every child. Ekal Vidyalaya schools have been set up in many places of Nepal too today.
This movement of people is about the change of life of many other peoples. This has brought the revolution of education in rural India. The Ekal Vidyalayas is an innovation to education which started in 1989. Today it is providing a lending hand to more than 3 million children in primary education in more than hundred thousand villages across India. This is a result of the work of hundreds of thousands of dedicated workers all over the world that helped to protect 30,000 villagers during the Corona pandemic.
Even during the pandemic children’s wear given guidelines and lessons for keeping social distance and practiced physical exercises through sports and games 2 to keep them away from illness. They also continued to practice making crafts. The children are now more familiar with their culture. Nearly 4 million children have developed their lives before getting the required help from the support of education provided by these Vidyalayas.
Major activities of Ekal Vidhyalayas
Education
This scheme offers five years of free, non-formal education to the age group of children from 6–14 years. A normal school has 30–40 students guided by a local youth who has passed grades 8 or 9 and has been particularly trained. A local controller takes care of a unit of 10 schools, called a “subcluster”. Local people are also included in higher organization levels like a “cluster” which is a unit of 30 schools, subarea (unit of 90 schools), and area (unit of 270 schools). The classes are organized under a tree or in a hut. They use informal ways like folk dramas, storytelling, folk songs, and religious discourses.
Not only education but there are various other activities for farmers, women and youth to empower rural India. Teaching farmers to make organic manure lets them advance agriculture. These resources have become the important point of empowerment of rural India.
Main skill development programs like tailoring training for rural women. Women after being trained here are becoming self-supporting. Computer centres for youth were also built as they will not be able to learn with high cost. Providing computer literacy and digital skills to rural youth. There is no discrimination of caste, everybody is equal.
Ekal on wheels is another activity provided by the scheme. This is a truly different effort to bring digital literacy to the most underserved youth in India’s remotest villages. E-shika is another way of digital learning to 100,000 primary schools.
Telemedicine- enhanced arogya is another activity for health services, integrated village development and Gramothan Resource center which provides skills training and resources to build a great future for the youths.
Impacts in society
- It increases moral and value education with rapid pace of growth in India. People are drifting away from their cultures and conventional values, as seen from developing individualism and materialism. Ekal this looks for offering value education to children studying in EV schools.
- The Improved quality of education gives children better general knowledge Reading, arithmetic skills and writing. The children can improve handwriting and self-reading skills of children.
- The scheme helps in the development of extra-curricular skills. This is done by engaging in different competitions organized by EKAL, formal schools and by others. Ekala Vidhyalaya teaches guides in finding and moulding individual talents such as singing, drawing, elocution, yoga.
- Ekal also supports the increase in awareness on sanitation. The teachers here have understood the need and significance of maintaining good sanitation and have brought awareness on sanitation and facilitate the people to keep their village surroundings very clean.
Establishment and development of Ekal Vidhayalas
Ekal founding volunteers began operating with rural and tribal communities as the need marked in Ramamurthy Committee Report and motivated by Swami Vivekananda ‘that if a child cannot come to school then school must reach to the child’. Hence began this ‘One Teacher School’s movement. With the collaboration of many trusts, individuals, non-profit organizations with equal help and engagement of locals in functioning the schools. This successful movement has become the largest ordinary level non-governmental education & development movement that functions even in the smallest villages of India and Nepal.
It is inspiring to know that they aim on discouraging out-of-school children by admitting the children at school going age into both EVs and formal (government) schools, thereby trying to lower the number of the drop-outs.
In 1986, this foundation was established in Gumla district, Jharkhand. The one teacher schooling drive was visualized by Bhaurao Deoras, the younger brother of the 3rd Sarsanghchalak of RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh), Madhukar Dattatraya Deoras. The management was developed on Bhaurao’s idea by a senior functionary of the RSS named Shyam Gupta.
Global support networks were launched in the 1990s. The Foundation of Ekal Vidyalaya in India was officially registered in 2000 and soon after the EVF-USA was registered.
Ekal Vidyalaya Foundation is connected with the Hindu nationalist organisations Vishva Hindu Parishad, which in turn is a member of the Sangh Parivar, the family of organisations run by the RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh). In the past, the foundation was headed by Subhash Chandra, the Chairman of Essel Group and the founder of Zee TV. The Indian actress and danseuse, Hema Malini has worked as the global brand ambassador for the Ekal Vidyalaya movement.
Lead role of Shyam Ji Gupta
This initiative of Ekal Vidyalaya got momentum the day when Shri Shyam Ji Gupta became the Master Architect of Ekal Vidyalaya Model. Having immense organizational skills and incomparable responsibility and conviction for the cause, he changed the informal model of education into a generous global movement which became known as Ekal Abhiyan. Subsequently Shri Shyam Ji Gupta has been the stable source of motivation and guidance for the whole Ekal Movement.
