An Experiment for Creating a Value-Based Life Shaping Education
Children, who don’t like to study, and the children for whom the school campus is limited to the lessons of disciplined learning in the traditional system, have their unique potential for learning. They have their own insight, skills, and dreams. We just need to identify their inclinations, choices, and help them grow.
When such children do not study, people around them use them for different works. Such children become a cheap tool for everyone. Thus, such children are vulnerable to mental, physical, economical, social, and cultural exploitation.
A search for finding an alternative solution to the situation led Anunbandh to explore the idea of education differently. School and university systems tag students with ‘Failed’, who do not meet their set criteria. But such labels do not reflect students’ failures but expose the gaps in the present educational institutions and systems. The current structure and practices have failed to identify the true potential of the students and make them realize their abilities. The ideal education process should help students to recognize their inner potential and inspire them to nurture that potential for the betterment of society and the country.
Anubandh believes that providing a platform to such children will ignite a positive energy amongst themselves. Children will be saved from choosing a wrong and unethical harmful path for their life. Their potential can be harnessed for the larger benefits of society.
Anubandh Karmapeeth does not follow school textbooks or exams. We believe that every child is bright, and only needs to recognize his or her potential and a chance to develop their abilities further. Anubandh Karmapeeth is a place for children to learn through a curriculum shaped by their own dreams. Here is the scope for learners to open many directions for their development.
Anubandh Karmapeeth gives children a clear way to spread their wings by recognizing their unique strengths, inspiring them to think out of the box, develop critical and creative thinking, developing their natural abilities into their skills by engaging in new experiments.
Here children plan their own path of learning.
- Children will learn by working with everyday life issues
- Learn from mistakes
- Curiosity-driven learning
- Shared learning
- Learning through interdependence and collaboration
- Learning of children will match the requirements of family and society
We believe that such an approach to children’s education will strengthen the financial aspect of the family and shape a happy life. If everyone’s feelings for children deprived of love and opportunity are somehow connected, collective efforts can open the paths of a large and diverse work. The society has to win the hearts of children who have become stubborn due to constant disapproval and condemnations. We need to engage with the children, who have lost all the hopes and fill their hearts with warmth of love, care, and affection and nurture them.
Anubandh Karmapeeth is creatively associated with the pedagogy development of self-developed education. Our colleagues are collectively working on the question: How can we bring self-rule to our daily lives?
Self-developed learning means that each person should be able to actively modify the structure and function of their own learning program to suit their specific talents, questions, concerns, and dreams.
It provides ample scope to learners for exploring multiple areas at once and develop a curriculum related to more than one branch of knowledge. We believe in learning by making mistakes, learning by reflecting, learning by exchanging, and learning through service. Key components of our program include self-awareness, action-research and experimentation, community-driven life, learning through travel, learning challenges, and social entrepreneurship projects.
No certificate is required to join Anubandh Karmapeeth, and we do not award any degree after the programs. We value focusing on real skills and experiences rather than certifications. We stand together to make children entrepreneurs based on their own dreams and skills and develop their own startups. So that they become job givers and not the job seekers. This is a movement to reimagine education and the education system.
Anubandha Karmapeeth is based on the concepts of personality building, Gramswaraj, and entrepreneurship by giving childhood to every child. It depends on the surroundings and the realities of the situation, environment, and community life. Current education works mainly until passing the examinations, there is a large number of students, who follow this system and sail through it and establish themselves in society.
However, there is a unique class of children, whose abilities and potential cannot be recognized or measured by the prevailing education system. For such children, the boundaries of school campuses are too limited to explore and recognize their own potential. They are unable to find their ‘right fit’ in the present education system. They are not able to adapt to the set system and do not associate themselves with the set curriculum.
Despite several efforts of parents and teachers, children are not able to connect with their school due to lack of interest. Having said that, we must acknowledge that such children have some really good skills, but nobody provides them an opportunity to identify themselves, and we, their so-called elders do not even try to understand such children. As a result, these children become victims of antisocial activities. We snatch away their childhood only for the reason that such children do not attend school, or they are not good in conventional education parameters or we simply despise them by tagging as dull-witted or stupid, because they are not good in their studies.
Anubandh Karmapeeth has emphasized making children learn in a way they like. We facilitate the learning of children who want to learn differently. Everyone’s learning process is different, but we are doing it with a set system, which is not acceptable to these children in any way. There is no alternative to the current system or choice for the children who want to learn in such a unique way. Anubandh Karmapeeth is the place for such children.
Functionality of Anubandh Karmapeeth:
- Comprehensive education
- Life skills and basic education
- Self-sustaining education
- Professional skills
- Personal and physical skills
- Other special activities
We are engaging with children in different areas and villages through various activities. Our primary efforts are to prevent them from choosing the wrong and unethical ways to sustain their lives. We sensitize them to humanitarian values and help them start living in community structures.
At the same time, we work towards igniting their interest in learning and developing their skills so that they can have the confidence to earn their livelihood through entrepreneurship from the place they are living. Every child is bright; we just need to give him or her a chance and blow and shake off the dust on their abilities.
We started our work with the children whose parents are selling illicit liquor or engaged in gambling-like illegal activities for livelihood. Today, those children are happy and engaged in their learning activities. We want to work with the children of parents who are in prisons, to prevent them from developing any revengeful feelings or violent nature and develop their psycho-sociological abilities to establish a healthy association with society.
Anubandh strongly believes that such engagement with the children will merge a whole neglected community with mainstream society. It will help develop confidence and sharpness for life. Children can win the hearts of confidence and trust of society.
Students will get guidance from the trainers in their self-learning and curiosity-driven learning process, which will make them sharper and confident. This will shape them as better human beings and empowered citizens.
At present, we have been able to connect with around 180 children in 18 areas and villages.
The strategy phase-wise implementing the concept of Anubandh Karmapeeth is as follows:
- Outreach to the areas to identify children and prepare them to decide their dreams based on life skills
- Work with them in their area for 4 months and then start to teach those children in Anubandha Karmapeeth full time
- We are also working with the families of the children about the upbringing process and malnutrition
Admission Criteria in Anubandh Karmapeeth:
- Weak and underprivileged children will be given priority
- Siblings of school-going age of the admitted learner must attend school regularly in their respective standards
- The learner of Anubandh Karmapeeth cannot have a child marriage
- If the family members of the learner have any kind of addiction, they will gradually give it up. The learner and the family will refrain from any addiction