|
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,
to develop a supplementary curriculum for schools
which has been used with over 10,000 children in
schools in Mumbai. The culmination of this effort is
the Sangati kit. Sangati is a thought-provoking
series of six interactive teaching-learning kits
that attempts to make school education more relevant
and vibrant by enhancing the quality of what is
taught and how it is taught. Sangati emphasizes the
links between specific themes rather than on
isolated pieces of information.
The Sangati series provide a different
perspective for children to understand and analyze
the world around them. Each of the kit comes with a
teacher’s manual and visual aids (Flipcharts,
posters, stories and games). 4 out of the 6 kits
have are currently available. The themes covered
through the kits are:
1.
Me, my body and my needs – It’s an
exploration of self, what forms self and the
interaction of self with society. The kit focuses on
understanding that each one of us is unique and yet
shares something with every other human being. It
helps understand the potential and limitations of
our body, and that regardless of our differences all
of us have the same needs.
2.
Our Earth and the web of life – This kit
has stories from different cultures of how earth
evolved and then proceeds to understand what science
tells us till date. It looks at how we are all
interdependent, how our earth provides the resources
that make it possible for us to fulfill our needs
and the kind of impact we have had in the short time
of our existence.
3.
How societies developed – It’s a journey
through world history looking at chronologically
important events from homo-sapiens to around 1950.
It tracks what happened to human beings in different
parts of the world. It provides the children a way
of relating world history to everyday life and
history taught in the regular school set-up. The kit
focuses on understanding history as a living subject rather than a mass of pre-selected
information.
4.
The way we live today - Continuing changes in
technology and different social, economic, political
and cultural institutions influence how we live
today. This kit looks at the Indian society and
primarily ten contemporary issues. Some of these
issues are - Family
relations, gender relations, caste relations,
communal relations,
formation of stereotypes, coping with
stereotypes – trying to overcome them, what our
democracy is like – how it functions, how it ought
to function, my role in that, economic inequalities,
war and violence, nationalism, sessions on media and
concluding sessions.
5.
Understanding Changes - Change characterizes
our relationships with one another, other forms of
life, and the environment. By understanding these
changes and their impact we can learn to deal with
them and to create the kind of society that we want.
This kit will look at systems vis-à-vis change,
development and people.
6.
Preparing for our future – This final kit
will prompt us to think of future for us as
individuals, our society and our earth. It would
explore various alternatives in education, in
lifestyle, in the way people think, identifying
issues that we want to change and visions for the
future. Children will explore what they are today,
what they would like to be tomorrow, as human
beings, as their occupation and what relationships
they would like to have.
Sangati
Kits can be ordered from : AVEHI-ABACUS PROJECT,
3rd Floor, K. K. Marg Municipal School, Saat
Rasta, Mahalaxmi, Mumbai 400 011. Telephone :
022-23075231/23052790
Email
: avcab@bom5.vsnl.net.in
|
