Pratham submitted the proposal for Summer Camp program to Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (Andhra Pradesh) in January but when even after repeated following up when Pratham did not receive any feedback from SSA on the matter, it decided to implement the Summer Camp program on an independent basis in the state. But in April, Pratham team learned that SSA was also planning to run a similar education supplementary program during summer vacations in the state of AP that was on the lines of Pratham's Summer Camp program. As Pratham and SSA's Summer Camp program target area and target populations was absolutely parallel, Pratham team initiated negotiations with the government in order to collaborate in running the Summer Camp program in partnership with SSA. Within this collaboration, SSA wanted to pay the volunteers executing the program at village level a stipend of Rs 1500 per month but as Pratham had already mobilized 18000 volunteers in the 10 districts where Summer Camp programme was to be held in the state, it was finally decided that the progarm will be run on a voluntary basis by the volunteers. But in order to not deprive the volunteers of any long-term benefits through participation in Summer Camp program, instead of providing remuneration to them, it was decided that the government would provide them with the assurance that volunteers participating in Summer Camp program will be given preference for getting the post of vidya volunteers in the subsequent academic year. Also it was decided that during the program, the volunteers will be provided with a travel allowance during trainings and raw material to generate teaching aids during their 3 day training period with SSA.

Though even now this travel allowance has not been released in many districts, it shows that working with the government has been a challenging task for Pratham team but nonetheless the monitoring support provided by SSA is greatly appreciated by Pratham.

Coverage

All Read India districts of AP that are totally 10 in number with more focus on five priority districts of Telangana region, namely Nalgonda, Karimnagar, Ranga Reddy, Nizamabad, Warangal. This categorization into priority and non-priority districts for Summer Camp programme was done based on ASER 2007 statistics.

Pratham Personnel

Pratham in order to efficiently run the Summer Camp program involved various people at different levels in the 11 Summer Camp districts to undertake diverse activities within the program. Earlier Pratham's support group had the hierarchy of 1 Mandal Coordinator who took care of 9 mandals each but in order to efficiently implement the Summer Camp program, it was decided to have campaign specific Assistant Mandal Coordinators who were responsible for only two mandals during the duration of the program.

Trainings

Pratham in order to orient the Summer Camp program team conducted the following trainings at different levels:

• State Level Resource Group Training

A total of 177 Mandal Coordinators and Assistant Mandal Coordinators from all the Summer Camp districts were trained at two urban centers of Hyderabad and Vishakapatnam. They were given a three-day long training so that they may totally understand the objectives, implementation strategy and monitoring methods for Summer Camp program.

On the first day of training, the MCs and AMCs were trained broadly in three areas. Firstly they were trained in the area of mobilization and motivation of parents, volunteers and community members in villages so that they may participate in the Summer Camp program, secondly they were trained in the area of conducting baseline and final tests for children and thirdly in teaching methodologies for language i.e. Telugu.

In the first half of the second day of training, the participants were taught teaching and testing methods for mathematics. They were also introduced to certain activity based teaching tools like games that they may use in class to keep up the interest of children in the subject. In the second half of the day, the participants were taken for a field visit to a nearby village so that they may get introduced to the process of conducting campaigns in the community. On reaching the village, the participants were divided into three groups that were to focus on the three areas of firstly mobilizing sarpanch and village people, secondly motivating parents and children and lastly executing a village mapping exercise. Once all the stakeholders from the village had collected for the Summer Camp Campaign, the MCs and AMCs participating in the campaign divided themselves in new areas of testing group, anganwadi helpers, reading (telugu) supporters and maths group supporters. Thus, through this exercise the participants were trained in different aspects of conducting campaign mode classes in villages for the Summer Camp program.

On the third day of training for Mandal Coordinators and Assistant Mandal Coordinators were made to participate in a feedback session based on the earlier two days of training. At this time, the participants were also encouraged to ask questions and clarify any doubts that they may have had about any aspect of Summer Camp program. In the end a session on opinions was conducted where participants in the training shared their experiences of conducting the campaign mode class on the previous day, therefore sharing their learning, challenges and advise on improvement of such an initiative in the villages. The volunteers were also encouraged to take the support of older students like those of 10 th class in villages to conduct campaign mode classes.

•   Volunteers training by Pratham

In order to provide a decentralized training to the volunteers, cluster level trainings for 10882 volunteers were conducted in all 11 districts of Summer Camp.


Mandal

In this training model, each mandal was divided into three clusters, namely A B C and only 12 volunteers from each cluster were called for the training in order to economize the program implementation cost. These volunteers who were trained directly by Pratham then behaved as catalysts of Summer Camp program and trained other volunteers in their respective clusters. As each Assistant Mandal Cooordinator was responsible for 2 districts, they could implement the training module within three days in three clusters of a mandal. In this way AMCs could accomplish finishing their trainings in 2 mandals within a span of 6 days.

In a day long training module, the Pratham Resource Persons trained the volunteers on various aspects of Summer Camp program like program objectives, testing tools explanation, division of children in groups according to their learning levels, activity-based learning methodology for languages and mathematics, community mobilization techniques, teacher learning material usage etc. The training sessions concluded with a review session for the entire day's training during which queries of volunteers on various aspect of Summer Camp were patiently addressed by the Resource Groups of Pratham. After the Review session, TLM and travel plus food allowance was distributed to the volunteers.

Training undertaken by Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan  

• Volunteers training by Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan

A total of 8128 volunteers were trained by Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan in 11 Summer Camp districts of Andhra Pradesh. The three day training provided by SSA was based on the child learning levels. Also during this training a teaching module as well as raw material to create teaching-learning aids was provided to the volunteers by SSA resource persons.

Teacher Learning Material

The following teacher learning material was provided by Pratham as part of the Summer Camp program to 10904 centers in 11 districts of AP:

• Reading cards
• Math worksheets
• Currency notes
• Black board
• Chalk box
• Straws
• Rubberbands

Community Involvement

In order to generate sensitization about Pratham's Summer Camp program in the community, a number of initiatives were taken by Pratham's personnel in the villages. The goal behind such community involving tools was to create a long-term support mechanism for Pratham's programs at grassroot level in the villages.

• Campaign Mode classes

While keeping the goal of making the community closely observe the classroom practices of Pratham's Summer Camp program, it was decided to have some classes in the campaign mode within villages. Classes in campaign mode meant involving the community through the support of Pratham's volunteers to collectively participate in a

class that involved ice-breakers, learning through games, learner centered teaching practices as well as activity based learning tools. A total of 14813 such campaigns were conducted during the duration of Pratham's Summer Camp program.

• Sarpanch Support Letters

The aim of Pratham's Summer Camp program was to actively involve the community in the teaching-learning processes of its children. In order to reach this aim it was decided to develop a letter which underlined the nature of support required by the community for the program. This letter was subsequently got signed by the democratically elected head of the village i.e. the Sarpanch by Pratham volunteers. A total of 5426 such letters were got signed during the duration of Pratham's Summer Camp program.

• Slogan “Read India , Read Andhra Pradesh”

While endeavoring to create visibility for Pratham's Summer Camp program at village level, it was decided that with the help of the community the slogan “Read India , Read Andhra Pradesh” would be written on the walls in the villages. This initiative was taken in order to develop a visible reminder for the community to continue to pursue the goal of educating their children with the help of Pratham's support mechanism at grassroot level. In a total of 5628 villages, this slogan was written on the walls.

Assessments

In order to holistically evaluate the impact of the Summer Camp programme, the following evaluations are being undertaken:

Challenges