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INTRODUCTION The AVEHI Public Charitable Educational Trust was set up in 1981 to promote empowerment through education. The ABACUS project was initiated by AVEHI in 1990 with the aim of developing a supplementary curriculum for schools. Over the next few years, the AVEHI-ABACUS curriculum was used with over 10,000 children in schools and NFE centres. It was refined and modified on the basis of responses received from teachers and children and evaluation studies by educationists. The Sangati series is the culmination of this effort.
The AVEHI-ABACUS project is concerned with both what is taught in school and how it is taught. The goal is to make school education more meaningful and relevant and the process of learning interesting and enjoyable for teachers and children. AVEHI-ABACUS attempts to provide teachers and children with a way of thinking, of looking at and interpreting the world. This is intended to enable the child to see the linkages between · everyday experience and what is learnt formally · apparently disparate subject areas · modes of living of different civilizations · the world of nature and culture. The aim is to equip the child with an outlook and a method of study – a tool – which will help her/him grow up into a thinking, concerned human being. The focus is on developing children’s skills of thinking, analyzing and making choices; and on inculcating the values and habits of mind that will enable them to cope with the daily reality of their lives and to live and work with others in a spirit of understanding and harmony. AVEHI-ABACUS has developed an integrated package of educational materials for students in the formal as well as the non-formal streams of learning. This package is called Sangati. The programme is meant to supplement and enrich the existing school curriculum, and not to replace it. It is designed as a foundation course, as a means of integrating all that a child learns – in different subjects at school, as well as outside the school.
How did AVEHI-ABACUS begin ? Later the effort was carried forward in an experimental school attached to the B.M. Institute of Child Psychology and Development in Ahmedabad. Here again, it was not based directly on the formal school curriculum. After a long interval, the programme was taken up in the 1970s at Bal Bhavan, Delhi. Children were provided an opportunity to interact with artists, writers and teachers and explore their surroundings through art, drama and dance. It was only in 1990 when AVEHI took up the programme, and named it ABACUS with Shanta Gandhi as Director, that it was actually tried out in a formal school setting. At Bal Bhavan, the programme was already being structured to move from an informal to a non-formal setting. Now, it had to be further structured and modified for students in the formal stream. Both in the informal and non-formal settings, there had been no constraint of time or of rigid classification of learners according to age groups. These factors had now to be taken into account in order to restructure the programme for a formal setting. AVEHI-ABACUS in municipal schools in Mumbai and other parts of Maharashtra For five years from 1991 onwards, the AVEHI-ABACUS programme was developed and tested at the Mahalaxmi Hindi-medium municipal school in Mumbai. Beginning with students of Std III, the programme worked with a group of about 35 children till their graduation from Std VII. Every week AVEHI-ABACUS facilitators conducted an hour-long session with these school children, and the programme worked to enrich the existing school curriculum. Based on this experience, and the realization that sustaining the programme would require the active involvement of teachers, the programme was modified. Between 1996 and 2001, detailed session plans and visual materials were provided to teachers from 25 municipal schools, 35 NFE centres and two private schools. Training workshops were held with these teachers who then used the AVEHI-ABACUS materials in class. Their feedback was invaluable in giving shape to the final curriculum. Thus when the Sangati series was launched in 2001, it was based on 10 years of experimentation with a variety of groups in different situations in the formal and non-formal sectors. This new series was packaged in the form of six comprehensive teaching-learning kits for Classes V, VI and VII. From the new academic year in July 2001, these kits began to be used in all 180 schools in two municipal wards in Mumbai. Soon after the kits also became part of a UNICEF sponsored Life Skills Improvement Programme for Quality Education in 120 schools in Yavatmal and Chandrapur districts of Maharashtra. Today in 2006, the Sangati kits are poised to become part of the school curriculum in all the municipal schools in Mumbai for students from Std V to Std VII. Even now the way the programme works remains essentially the same -- as a curriculum enrichment programme or a foundation course that links the different things that children learn in school and outside.
Phase 1 June 1991 to March 1996 : Mahalaxmi municipal school -- 35 children (same group from Std III to Std VII). Phase 2 June 1996 to March 2001 : 25 municipal schools -- 6962 children (Std III to Std VII) 35 NFE centres in Mumbai (between 8 and 13 years) 2 private schools (Std III to Std VII) Phase 3 (Sangati) June 2001 to March 2005 : 180 municipal schools in 2 municipal wards in Hindi, Marathi, Urdu, Gujarati, English, Kannada, Tamil and Telugu schools -- 42,000 children (Std V to Std VII) June 2002 to March 2005 : 120 Zilla Parishad schools in Yawatmal and Chandrapur districts -- 27,924 children 50 NFE centres Several private schools Phase 4 (Sangati) June 2006 onwards -- 923 municipal schools in all 24 wards in Mumbai
The AVEHI-ABACUS project began with a small group of individuals brought together by an interest in education. This group, known as the core team, was involved in all the tasks in the initial stages of the project. It was this team that developed the curriculum, wrote out detailed sessions plans, designed the visual aids and conducted the classroom sessions in the first phase of the project. Subsequently, this team (with some new members) was responsible for revising the curriculum, conducting training workshops and writing, designing and producing the Sangati series. The current members of the core team are: Deepa Balsavar, Deepa Hari, Nandini Purandare, Noella de Souza, Ratna Pathak Shah, Sandhya Gandhi-Vakil and Vasudha Ambiye, with Simantini Dhuru as the Director of the project. A team of about 50 observers and field co-ordinators – all qualified in Social Work or Education – co-ordinate with schools and attend the Sangati classes. In addition to providing support to teachers for smooth conduct of the Sangati sessions, their role is also valuable in providing feedback to the core team, thus ensuring a continuous process of monitoring and evaluation of the materials. Their work is co-ordinated by Manisha Naik, who also oversees other activities including training of teachers and networking with the Municipal Corporation and other organizations. Other personnel are involved in a variety of tasks ranging from networking with other NGOs and initiating advocacy measures at various levels, to supervising production and distribution of materials, office administration and maintenance. No account of the AVEHI-ABACUS team can be complete without a mention of Shanta Gandhi. Dancer, teacher, writer, founder of Bal Bhavan, Chairman of the National School of Drama – Shanta Gandhi had been all of these before she became the founder-director of the AVEHI-ABACUS project. Although well past seventy at the time the project was initiated, it was her enthusiasm and relentless drive that kept the project going through the initial phases; and in spite of her physical ill-health, she continued to take an active part in the project in later years. Shantaji passed away in May 2002. But she continues to inspire us at every step of the way.
The work of AVEHI-ABACUS has been supported by several agencies including the Ministry of Human Resources Development, Department of Education, Govt. of India; Child Relief and You (CRY); ASHA for Education; United Nations International Children’s Fund (UNICEF); Aga Khan Foundation; Australian Agency for International Development (AusAID); British High Commission; Elsie Spykman Foundation, The Netherlands; Manos Unidas; REACH India. The Department of Education, Mumbai Municipal Corporation has also supported the work of AVEHI-ABACUS, both at the planning and implementation stages.
|  Government School in Yavatmal where the Sangati project is taught.  Launch of the first printed sangati kit in Dec 1990.  Sangati class in session.
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