Eklavya is a non-government registered society that was set up in 1982 to actively seed and develop academic programmes for curricular change in elementary education, at the micro level, and mainstream them through government and non-government agencies. From the onset, it took up the academic responsibilities of the landmark Hoshangabad Science Teaching Programme (HSTP), and developed and implemented the innovative Social Science Teaching Programme and the Primary Education Programme (PRASHIKA) in the government schools of Madhya Pradesh.
Over the past four decades, Eklavya has been engaged in various efforts to improve education at government schools. Eklavya has also been working with NCERT, various SCERTs, teacher-education institutions and other stakeholders, besides being involved in community-linked initiatives, publishing work in science, education and children’s literature.
More recently it worked with the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) in developing the National Curriculum Framework (NCF) 2005, syllabus and textbooks.
Currently our field engagements are rooted in six districts of Madhya Pradesh and a large area of Maharashtra. These engagements primarily focus on teacher training, Science education and pedagogy, community engagement, reading initiatives, learning by doing, and similar other aspects.
Eklavya has been actively working towards the mentoring and capacity building of teachers, trainers, facilitators etc from various organisations. Currently we are working with WIPRO foundation, Educo and other groups, with the organisations they are supporting for various organisations for mentoring and capacity building of the team members, teachers, facilitators etc on language, mathematics, EVS, Science, documentation, research, ECCE, child development, philosophy of education, to name a few.
We are also working in Faizabad district of Uttar Pradesh on ECCE and primary on teachers’ professional development and in Bihar with Aga Khan Foundation as Learning Partners in a global project – Schools2030.
The publishing and dissemination efforts of Eklavya are guided by its school and community based programmes. The overriding concern is to keep the reading material close to the life and environment of the readers and also produce it at an affordable price. Eklavya has published book titles in Hindi, English, Marathi, Gujarati, Bangla and Urdu. It has also published some titles in non-mainstream languages like Gondi, Korku, Malvi, Bundeli and Mundari.
Many of Eklavya’s Projects, Field Activities have been affected due to the Covid -19 pandemic. We had to change our ongoing strategies. To counter this Eklavya has further decentralized and intensified its field initiatives and have started Mohalla Learning/Gatividhi activity centers where it is visualized as a comfortable learning space in the immediate vicinity of a primary/middle school for the child to continue engagement with meaningful and joyful learning experiences scaffolded by an older sibling/ local youth / young parent (called the Mohalla /Village LAC facilitator).
Geography:
Madhya Pradesh – Betul, Hoshangabad, Bhopal, Mandla, Badwani and Dhar
Maharashtra – Amravati, Aurangabad and Hingoli
Uttar Pradesh – Faizabad
Bihar – Patna and Samastipur