As per United Nation Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG 4) of Quality Education, achieving universal, inclusive and quality education is a proven pathway to sustainable development.
While remarkable strides have been made in improving access to primary education for all kids, there still remain gaps when it comes to educating women, girls and children from the poorest households.
PRERANA envisages education as a vehicle for women’s empowerment. PRERANA’s work on inclusive education focuses on imparting foundational literacy skills to rural and peri-urban women. This work aligns closely with SDG 4 by addressing constraints to education faced by women.
In collaboration with Development Alternatives, PRERNA worked on the Tara Akshar project in Mirzapur, Jaunpur and Sant Ravidas Nagar districts in Uttar Pradesh and facilitated functional literacy skills and post-literacy skills to over 5,000 women as a tool to empowerment and self-hood.
PRERANA identified Safe Learning Spaces in women’s own community and teaching was imparted by trained instructors from the same socio-cultural milieu. To link newly gained literacy skills with utility, women were facilitated to revisit their everyday issues such as health, hygiene, nutrition and finances as literate beings. They were engaged in reading hoardings, pamphlets about schemes, provisions, doses and precautions on medicines and prescriptions, writing and maintaining records related to savings made, vaccinations done for their children, writing applications and filling forms. This initiated reflection and action in women to transform their own world they had known in a particular way until then.
