a katha initiative

Like every other country, India too expects her young people to participate in the process of democracy as equal and active citizens. We believe that all children are equal and have a right to bring themselves the best knowledge available.

Yet we know that most of our children are NOT equal. Economic poverty has meant that they also face other poverties -- of schooling, teaching, learning, preparedness for good futures.
The education we give to children from economically poor families doesn’t measure up. We penalize children who do not know English.

One of the best tools for poverty alleviation is quality education. This creates the responsible, responsive citizen, an individual who contributes to self, family and world. The best democratic education for democracy helps make people caring and sharing, mature and quality conscious.

Katha Schools have been creating such people systematically for the last decade and more; we call such people the dreamers-doers. Our students have passed rigorous external evaluations with flying colours. Our students come from impoverished slums of Delhi. We believe that if their performance, attendance, retention can touch close to 100%, other students can too.

Our deep-rooted and intense experience of working for over 17 years with children from underserved communities and understanding how these children get into higher education and how they barely survive over there, is what made our innovative founder, Geeta Dharmarajan, start work on the TRANSLATION FOR EQUITY centre. The centre brings together her work, experience and the grassroots knowledge into the centre that will link the two benchmarking components of Katha: Literary translations. And education of children from unserved communities.

THE CHALLENGE. The Translation for Equity site will give students access to reliable knowledge.. Foi better performance in school. For helping students from non-English medium schools to bring themselves quality knowledge in college so they are well-prepared for a future carer in a globalized world.

Katha will lead students into colleges where they can learn to be contributing members of the country, responsive and responsible world citizens, even as they feel proud of their roots and the culture they come from.

PS.C.C . THE SCHOOL TO COLLEGE TO CAREER LINK

A special partnership between civil society, government and the corporate sector, KTEC is specially designed for school and college students, starting with Class 4 and going up to the BA level.
The KATHA 100 is a special Language Arst Programme that helps students do well in reading -- the first requisite for doing well in early childhood and beyond

Its focus is students who come from non-English medium schools across the country and helps them bridge the scholastic gap that poverty and nonliteracy brings them. It reiterates Katha’s belief that young people whose knowledge of English is limited need not be condemned for life in India.
Knowledge not language is at the crux of college learning is the message we want to send out to good students who are stuck in poor quality schools and colleges and step into low paid jobs. Katha shows them a way!

By making learning and education truly democratic, we hope that the last walls around privilege will come crashing down! And translation activities can finally help proactively in poverty alleviation and in building level playing fields for all. Let your translation skill, your bilingualism help set a child free from the shackles of poor education. If we come together, we can do it!

THE OPEN INVITATION:

COM… LET’S MAKE TRANSLATION WORK FOR ALL!

Write to us for information on how you can

volunteer.

networking@katha.org