Read India programme was implemented in 13 Districts within July 2007 and March 2007. The selection of the 13 districts was strategically undertaken to ensure a proper comparison between three regions of Andhra Pradesh. The coastal belt of Andhra has an advantage of Pratham's interventions from the past 1-2 years, the Telangana area is a new area without any prior presence of Pratham and third region constituting two districts of Chitoor and Nellore had the advantage of having the presence of AID India , Pratham's partner NGO. 

October 2007 - January 2008

January 2008 - April 2008

April 2008- till date

Read to Learn (R2L)

Material distribution for R2L classes

R2L classes focus on Telugu language competency of children. Each class comprises of 20 students who are part of competency levels of Level 3 (can read easy paragraph) and Level 4 (can read simple story).

In an R2L class, a volunteer uses the following activities to teach children:

• Try and repeat after the volunteer who reads a story loudly
• Take a story which children read aloud
• Give 5 minutes to children who silently read a story and underline difficult words
• Volunteer discusses the meanings of the difficult words
• Children repeat these difficult words after the volunteer speaks them aloud
• Discussing question answers in groups of two. The volunteer divides the class into two groups where one group asks questions and the other group answers in quiz mode.
• Children write the gist of the story and the read it aloud
• Children are also encouraged by the volunteers to habitually maintain a daily dairy

The evaluation for an interactive R2L class happens both on individual and group basis.

English Classes

After making students proficient in their mother tongue Telugu, Read India programme also focuses on providing them training in English at beginner's level.

Children are helped in acquiring English vocabulary, pronunciation, communicative skills etc through the following of the below given four steps in order to make their learning a fun activity:

With the help of this 4 step question-answer methodology, the children's speaking and listening skills are enhanced by making them aware of colors through crocodile game, children are introduced to what questions like "What s your name?", "What is this?", "What class are you in?" etc, children are introduced to professions like doctor, lawyer, teacher etc, children are introduced to the flora and fauna in terms of recognizing animals and plants and children are made to identify activities like talking, flying, running etc.

The reading skills of children are polished by enabling them to identify big and small alphabets of English along with teaching them the skill of phonetic reading. The writing capacity of learners is enhanced by making them write English alphabets and simple words.

Qualitative Impact

• Mobilization of volunteers has been the strength and has been achieved uniformly across all the districts. Initially the plan was to have one volunteer per village but presently based on the size and willingness of the community to participate 2 to 3 volunteers have been mobilized.
• The involvement of SSA has been very good, all the schools are well aware of Read India campaign.
• The Block coordinators have made a strong base with the local education department structure. Regular meetings are held with the Mandal and district education teams to bring a positive change in the system.
• The State SSA is all geared up to face mini- ASER 2008, towards which regular meetings are been held and extra efforts are being made to encourage non readers to read.