The idea of Nalanda was conceived 25 years back by a number of top notch social thinkers, management professionals and education experts, who felt that a separate institution needs to be set up to cater to the aspect of quality primary education. Accordingly, Nalanda was set up in 1996 under society registration act 1860 with the goal of providing universal quality primary education, especially for children from the underprivileged sections of society. Since then Nalanda has been working both as an implementing agency and a Resource Centre for Educational Innovation in the states of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Jharkhand, where it intervenes and also in other states of India, on demand.

 

Nalanda is also registered under FCRA & 80G.

Vision

To ensure universal quality primary education to create an informed society that is empowered by knowledge to take its own decisions for its development.

Mission

Nalanda has defined its mission as to work towards providing access to quality basic education for children from underprivileged sections of society, through community mobilization, capacity building, advocacy, support services, training and innovation.

A Glimpse at some of Nalanda’s Past and  Present Activities

 

Collaboration with Government – Nalanda has a long standing collaboration with government. Nalanda has provided Training Support to Alternative Schooling programme of District Primary Education Programme  in 15 districts of U.P.  Nalanda has also intervened in the District Institute of Education Training (DIET) in district Barabanki to functionalize it. Many training packages/materials developed by Nalanda has been adopted by government system

 

Collaboration with UNICEF- As a technical support agency, Nalanda has developed a long-standing relationship with UNICEF. It has been providing technical and academic support to Child Rights Project (Bal Adhikar Pariyojana), Quality Girls’ Education Project , technical and academic support project for SSA. Support in development of supporting reading materials for children. Presently Nalanda is intervening in 40 Madarsas in Behraich, Balrampur, Gonda and Sravasti district of Uttar Pradesh with collaboration with UNICEF.

 

Intervention with Muqtab – Madarsa – One of the innovative interventions of NALANDA, which may be adopted by the government, is to strengthen the primary education in Madarsa system of education, where a majority of the Muslim children from poorer households go. The intervention in the Muqtab- Madarsa system aims at bringing those children under the fold of primary education who have so far received only religious teaching. Nalanda has intervened in approx.700 Madarsas in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.Integration of technology in education (ITE) – ITE is one of the new program sub component areas for Nalanda. Here Nalanda is introducing technology to education and assessing how the quality of education changes after the introduction.

 

School Improvement program- Nalanda is intervening in government schools for the improvement of quality of education in Jharkhand, Uttar Prdesh and Bihar. Nalanda is intervening in 90 such schools in these three states.

 

Learning Hub program – This is one of the new intervention areas for Nalanda. However, it is one of the areas with high potential as it is conceived around existing situations such as implementation of RTE. The learning hubs are compliment school based learning and also design various bridge courses so as to ensure age and class appropriate learning in various schools as stipulated under the RTE.

 

 

Jharkhand Resource Centre for Tribal Education – To cater the need of educational resource agency, Nalanda established Resource Centre for tribal education at Ranchi (Jarkhand) in the year 2004. After its establishment is now being widely recognized as a resource centre in the state of Jharkhand.

 

Girl’s Education Programme  – In view of the low rate of participation and completion by girls in the primary schooling cycle in rural area of Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand and Bihar, Nalanda had intervened to enhance the access and quality of primary education for the girls of age group 8-14.

 

Resource Support to government, non-government and ground Level NGOs – In the role of a resource centre, Nalanda has been providing technical and academic support to government agencies like DPEP,SSA,DIETs,SCERT etc. and more than 100 grass root NGOs and funding agencies working on education have benefited from NALANDA’s services. Nalanda has been providing technical and academic support to many large national level educational projects like Janshala (UN agency project), REACH INDIA PROJECT (US Aid project) etc.  Nalanda has worked as resource agency for many funding agency like PLAN INDIA, Rajiv Gandhi Foundation, ChildFund India, Education Development Centre, World Vision, UNICEF, Tdh etc.Besides that Nalanda execute NGO Capacity Building Course of one year for the NGOs working in the field of elementary education. Under this programme 10 NGOs from Uttarpradesh, Jharkand and Bihar are selected every year and capacitated to work qualitatively and efficiently in educational projects.

 

Research and Material Development  – One of the core strengths of Nalanda has been its research base, which has enabled it to garner more meaningful insight that has been integrated into its expertise domain for better future resource strengthening, support and interventions. A number of research studies had also been taken up by the organization in the field of primary education.

 

During the past 20 years, Nalanda has developed a plethora of materials for children as well as for teachers and educational project managers. The teaching/learning materials developed by NALANDA are in conformity with the norms set by NCERT.

 

So far the canvas of Nalanda is as follow :

    1. 3 states
    2. 8 districts
    3. 40 blocks
    4. 377 Villages
    5. 100 Government Schools
    6. 703 Madarsas
    7. 1,65,000 Children approx.
    8. Nalanda has partnered more than 200 NGOs in Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand, Bihar and in many other states.
    9. Nalanda has capacitated 4039 teachers so far, including private school teachers, government school teachers and teachers from Madarsas.
    10. Nalanda has also capacitated 618 resource persons across 214 NGOs and developed 45 types of training modules.
    11. Nalanda has developed 74 types of teaching learning materials for children including textbooks and supporting reading materials in Hindi, Urdu and in tribal languages.

     

    The interventions/programme within its framework of process are shown below:

    Contact Details:
    NALANDA
    8/261, Sector-8
    Jankipuram Extension, Lucknow-226031
    Phone No. : 0522-7118670
    Email : Nalanda_lko@rediffmail.com, nalandaindia@gmail.com
    Website : www.nalandaindia.org

    Contact Person

    Mr. Prabhat Jha
    Executive Director
    Mobile : 9415089316