Self-Preparations

Acquiring authentic information about Covid-19 was very important because there was a flood of information including rumors that created an atmosphere of fear and panic in some areas. Therefore, information disseminated by reliable sources like government bodies and UN agencies were banked upon to prepare the IEC materials that served as the prescribed guidelines for caregivers, other members of organization and parents of children and other community members. A report from the Chennai state office mentions that, “Although hand hygiene, oral hygiene and respiratory hygiene had always been part of our preventive medicine, Covid-19 emphasized the need to immediately focus on improving these measures world-wide. This provided an opportunity to focus on preventive health care at the homes. With the expertise of public health specialists and doctors, a series of capacity building sessions on personal hygiene, home sanitation, waste disposal, common illnesses and immunization were conducted for all levels of the organization with a focus on improving preventive health measures at the home level. Children were taught the golden rules of Covid-19 prevention such as hand hygiene, cough etiquette, social distancing and regular disinfection of surfaces.”

The outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic and its subsequent lockdown had a subtle impact on children, affecting their physical, mental and emotional growth. This was an enormous challenge faced by the care-givers in every home across RHP. The Hyderabad State Head says, “Children are hooked onto TV or in play mode. The home team is trying hard to make a schedule for their study time, as none are interested to study at this moment. Secondly, since the lock down may extend beyond 31st March, the challenge is figuring out what to do for the children who are with their families.” The Education unit, being aware of the issue, have been working on the issue. Once schools were shut down, the challenge for the home teams was to make sure that children do not suffer from huge losses in learning levels. The Rainbow Homes Program employs a few teachers and engages volunteers to keep children updated with their curricular, extra-curricular and life skill requirements. These home teaching teams are capable of supporting children with their school work and with these additional activities and initiatives, but are unable to mirror the schooling experience comprehensively. With the large numbers of children in different levels, going to different schools and requiring different pedagogical approaches, these small teams would ultimately find it extremely difficult to keep children engaged across school subjects and additional inputs.

An additional challenge that appeared during this period was the return of children to their families, which made reaching out to them to ensure some semblance of continuity in their educational endeavours a grave concern. These children would be unable to access their teachers, online materials or video conferencing nodes with the same ease that had been possible within our CCIs.

To implement this change in approach across the 10 cities in which RHP functions, several rounds of review discussions were undertaken with education team members across states on education status and interventions to ensure the continuing education of children with families.

The focus was to assess; i. Number of children currently at a Rainbow Home v/s children with their families ii. Support given to children outside the home iii. Government support to learning iv. Teaching learning structures and processes of RHP and how they have adapted to the new norm

v. Volunteer’s support vi. Digital infrastructure in each home vii. Suggestions for improvement and the way forward.

In this context, the idea was to develop; grade-wise systematic plans for foundational education incorporating academic, non-academic, physical and life skill components in integrated ways; creation of concrete achievable monthly targets; assessment of learning levels at regular intervals; focusing and developing the pedagogic capability of teachers in using online tools as well as offline practice; and the inclusion of crucial life skill components in the education plans of each home.

Each state team engaged organisations to work on the capacities of their teaching teams. In Bengaluru, Reap Benefit and Enfold India conducted comprehensive workshops for teachers on topics such as gender sensitivity, creativity, understanding the psychological and emotional impact of sexual and other forms of harassment, and creative social action. In Ranchi and Delhi, Pratham organised workshops to prepare team members to utilise the ASER learning tool, to assess children’s learning levels in a more systematic way. Bhoomi volunteers in Hyderabad, Pune and Chennai engaged children in art and craft, dance and spoken English sessions which also added to the rounded approach to education that RHP encourages in every home.

Further, to ensure requirements of the social, emotional, cognitive and physical development of each child, alternative ways of engaging children over and above academic activities have been devised. Despite constraints such as, lack of internet connectivity, lack of availability of functioning laptops and projectors, lack of education staff and capability of home team members in teaching difficult topics and other problems, a sustained effort was made to keep children engaged meaningfully, which included;

- Continued academic support by conducting classes at homes via video-conferencing or webinars, large utilization of e-learning videos of concepts relevant to the children’s academic routines, preparation of worksheets on academic topics by home teaching staff. - In terms of alternative activities, value-based movies, documentaries/short films on themes like, justice, honesty, love, joy, etc. had been screened. - Videos of different techniques and designs on art and craft activities had been sourced to help children make wonderful works of art from a variety of objects during the lockdown. - Theme based weekly programs were planned for all the homes such as, creating and performing plays, journal writing, watching a thought provoking video and having a discussion on the same, creating ‘Thank You’ notes and reading these in front of each other and watching cognitive level-based informational videos on key topics. - Morning yoga and meditation sessions, outdoor and indoor games, free-play, dance and music sessions, laughing sessions, Bal Sabha, Committee duties, etc. were continued. - Specifically, for young adults, career guidance videos, interactions with industry experts etc. were also organized.

As the RHP is keen to develop our children not only to succeed in the formal examinations but also be honest, caring and active members of society, a crucial focus of the educational inputs during this time were based on themes of life education. To achieve this purpose, several workshops were organised with home and state team members to sensitize them to the challenges, issues and perceptions with regard to caste, religion, gender, class and race that are ingrained in Indian society. Over the course the last year, home mothers, teachers, state