Disrupting literacy at scale through open source groundbreaking new processes

 

Supporting Documents

Transformation

Media Coverage

Media Coverage

Here some of the media reports in English are included. There has been considerable coverage in several Indian languages. Top government officials have shown their support by meeting Dr. Sunita Gandhi and attending various events organised by her.
Testimonies of Student Mentors Video 1

Testimonies of Student Mentors Video 1

Two students speak of their experience in English. One of them, Robert, was just 10 years of age in 2014 when he taught his learners of 12 and 14 years of age and a security guard at his home who was 42. He shares his story of teaching them a year later, in 2015, as a 6th grader with huge applause from the audience. Another student volunteer, Illika, a 9th Grade student taught several learners in 2014 and 2015. She speaks in 2021 of her experience then. She is currently completing her Junior Year at Mount Holyoke, in Masachusetts, USA. She talks about what this experience has meant to her.
Testimonies of Student Mentors Video 2

Testimonies of Student Mentors Video 2

In this video, student volunteers from schools across India talk about their experiences of teaching their learners of all ages. Many of them taught more than one. They talk about their joys and frustrations in the process. The student volunteers varied in ages from school going children to young adults at colleges.
Summary Data on Lucknow Intervention

Summary Data on Lucknow Intervention at Government Schools

Lack of foundational literacy and numeracy skills in government schools was addressed by Global Dream by involving pre-service teachers from Lucknow District Institute of Education & Training. 3781 children at 81 government schools were taught by 155 pre-service teachers during their period of internship. They collected baseline information on children of Grades 1 and 5, then taught them using Calendars and Cards provided by Global Dream and training in these methods by Dr. Sunita Gandhi. The learners on average improved their literacy levels from 45% to 88% in just 10 weeks including baseline and endline surveys.

Implementation in Lucknow Government Schools

Here a few of the pre-service teachers from the government's District Institute of Education & Training (DIET) share their experience of teaching using Global Dream methods in government schools where they taught. One of the visible impacts was increase in attendance levels and the principals of these schools asking the teachers to give them their teaching aids like calendars and cards. It is also apparent the low levels of learning the teachers discovered in the baseline assessments.
Towards a People's Movement in Lucknow

Towards a People's Movement in Lucknow

The idea of a people's movement in which all segments of society are involved was piloted in the microcosm of the city of Lucknow. This involved participation from students at schools and colleges, community based volunteers in the urban and rural communities, tie up with government pensioners, corporates and local artisans using several modalities of implementation.
Name Literacy Challenge Video

Name Literacy Challenge

In the experimental approach towards developing Global Dream by Dr. Gandhi, she discovered teaching a person to write their name is by far the most empowering. "Why not teach is right at the start rather than at the end of a literacy process?" she wondered. This started her experimenting with various ways to teach a person's name first. The video captures this process by Dr. Gandhi's first name literacy learner Punita.
Name Literacy Challenge

Name Literacy Challenge

The PDF guides a volunteer on how to teach name literacy in any language by taking example from Hindi. Soon name literacy will be going global with the help of Meg Pagani and her impacton team out of Italy and Portugal. Name literacy does not require any kit or printed materials, just guidelines for the volunteers similar to this PDF. After name literacy, learners are found to be highly interested in continuing their journey to complete literacy. The 'Helper's High' the volunteers feel propels them to continue teaching their learners too.
Power of One School

Power of One School

This is a concept in which community based individuals will be given a school-in-a-box kit and training to start their Power of One Schools in their own homes as one-room schools that can later be expanded from Class 3, to 5 to 8 levels. Children will be 'homeschooled' by them to prepare for National Institute of Open Schools examinations at Grades 3, 5 and 8. This is just being launched as a franchise model with revenue for the edupreneur and for DEVI Sansthan that will run the program. Other NGOs and institutions are likewise invited to participate.
Why Can’t The Children Read Report

Why Can’t The Children Read?

This extensive report from the Target Population Survey of Lucknow district's 1.5 million individuals from ages 6 to 60 covering 396,000 households provides analysis of the extent of the problem and provides some policy level recommendations for addressing the reading and numeracy goals of children within and outside of schools.
Accelerating Adult Literacy Report

Accelerating Adult Literacy

This extensive report from the Target Population Survey of Lucknow district's 1.5 million individuals from ages 6 to 60 covering 396,000 households provides analysis of the extent of the problem and provides some policy level recommendations for addressing literacy of adults.

Sustainable

Eyewitness Account by India TV

Eyewitness Account by India TV

The claim of 30-hour literacy + numeracy seems like a magic formula and media has been very keen to find out how this works. Here, India TV ran a weeklong sharing of their coverage of an urban slum based Global Dream Shaala (lab) in Chandan village. Dr. Sunita Gandhi is seen teaching the children and interacting with the community members.
Eyewitness Account by National ABP News

Eyewitness Account by National ABP News

India's second largest news channel ABP News did an extensive 5 minute coverage of the process. They share the merits of this powerful method in which Dr. Sunita Gandhi is seen teaching a completely illiterate lady right in front of the camera. The camera crew and the interviewer were personally deeply affected by the experience of covering this story.
Global Dream

Global Dream

In this newspaper article written by Mr. Anil Swarup, former Secretary of the Union Ministry of Education (India), he highlights that the innovative methodology of Global Dream helps accelerate literacy and numeracy among learners of all age groups. Global Dream's simple methodology and toolkit make it highly scalable and replicable. He also emphasizes that India's National Education Policy's highest priority is to achieve Universal Foundational Literacy and Numeracy by 2025, and out-of-the-box approaches like Global Dream can help achieve this goal.