2011-12 was an important and productive year for UTKAL NEEDS. The flagship program Read Keonjhar ran for the second year and improvements in the mass communication levels of the children reached under the campaign are clearly visible. The campaign, along with UTKAL NEEDS has focused attention on the provision of quality education and organized debate competitions on various social and environmental impact. In order to be ready for the next era, UTKAL NEEDS has identified some schools of keonjhar districts its need to focus more and more on learning mass communication quality and depth of learning, moving from being an organization that provides programs for basic reading and feature aspects. The idea being that the basic should now evolve to being implemented in a catalytic mode. In order to meet this requirement, we need to have stronger demonstration models and there are many internal challenges to be met- the first one being training and capacity building of our dedicated volunteers in readiness for delivery of more advanced content. The next most obvious one is the creation of the content and the methodology for delivering speech this content. Efforts are already underway to move into the next phase of the Read Keonjhar campaign - Read Keonjhar II. This will focus on higher levels of academic content. The campaign will also reach out to children of Std VI-XII.
UTKAL NEEDS will strengthen Read Keonjhar through some changes in structures, some changes in campaign phasing, and through improvements in the content of training. In 2011-12, approximately 25 District Resource Centers are being set up in key states and there will be about all blocks of the district. which are primarily teams of skilled trainers working on a district or a block scale respectively. Over the next three years, UTKAL NEEDS expects to create about 60 strong District Resource Centers through which it will continue to impact the complete keonjhar district of odisha. In the urban areas, UTKAL NEEDS aims at moving towards setting up and integrating our direct programs under one umbrella of the Urban Learning Centre which will be a dedicated space where our programs will operate and new ones for higher learning will be developed. In order to encourage sustainability, the cost of each child must be covered by UTKAL NEEDS through its donors.
It is envisaged that these UTKAL NEEDS will push the government into action through demonstration of success and provide an alternative to parents. These programs will be rolled out as an alternative to community classes, only where we do not have strong catalytic campaigns in partnership with government schools. Through the selective support mechanism, UTKAL NEEDS will ensure that vulnerable children in vulnerable communities are targeted and sponsored by UTKAL NEEDS donors to ensure that the education reaches the neediest children. This programme continues to advocate against child labour and achieve success both at the policy and programmatic levels.
We believe that with sufficient commitment, collaboration, and strategic focus, our goal of ensuring that every child is in school and become a good communicator for our nation well can be realized. In 2014-15, UTKAL NEEDS remains as firmly committed to this vision as always.
