Manish

Manisha Kumari is a young fiery eyed girl with big dreams. Her big dreams however need a strong foundation to stand on-- a good education. The lack of teachers in her school has meant that her education and dreams have been put on hold.

Community Correspondent Shabanam visited the pre-secondary school in Devanandpur village, Uttar Pradesh and reports of the poor quality of education in the school.

The teacher student ratio in the school is far from adequate. There are at the moment only 2 teachers who teach 102 students. Even these teachers, the students say, come as they please. The teachers themselves are over-worked as they often get pulled away for tasks like Census and election duty.

The result- a frustrated bunch of students and overworked staff.

For many in the school, this is the best that their parents can afford.

"If I had money, I'd send my children to a private school," says a parent.

"My community is a deeply conservative one; discrimination based on religion and gender are common problems. I feel education is vital for us to move ahead and catch up with the rest of the world. Especially for girls like Manisha who want to do something with their lives," says Shabanam.

For her part, Shabanam sees the Community Correspondent Network as an opportunity to empower herself so that she can in turn shed light on the issues in her community, the empowerment of women being the top priority.

Call to Action: Please call the District Education Officer on 0542-2506531 and ask him to ensure that more teachers are hired at the school.

About the Partnership: The Poorest Areas Civil Society (PACS) Programme and Video Volunteers have come together to create the Community Correspondents Network. The videos generated by the network will be able to highlight voices from the margins, providing skills to social communicators to provide advocacy tools to community based organisations.