Asha is an education initiative by Nutanhat Development Society (NDS) in 10 villages of Hura Block in Purulia, West Bengal. The project has set up out-of-school educational centres for 250 children in these 10 villages. These centres operate in every village, 5 days a week, and twice daily - in the morning and in the evening . Teachers for these centres have been chosen by NDS Volunteer Shri Rashoraj Lohar after consulting with local villagers. The teachers are conscientious villagers who have some educational background. The kids in these schools range from 4 yrs to 11 yrs old. They are taught Bengali, English and Maths. AID Penn State's NDS team wants to make this project a success and prepared detailed monitoring tables to document the progress of each student in every village. NDS will collect the information and send it to AID-Penn State every 3 months. Success of this project depends on how many children come out of these informal schools with skills that are necessary for them to do well in the exams in government schools (post class V). The broad goal is to lower the number of school drop outs.
AID Penn State's NDS team consists of Simanti Banerjee, Arijit Chatterjee, Anirban Hazra, Somesh Prasad Roy and Piyush Thakre.
