HKPR Zone

Pratham’s operations in Mumbai began in 1994 in 6 wards, out of which 3 wards were in the HKPR Zone. The operational area of the zone stretches from Bandra to Borivali.The zone was among the first to run the Balwadi programme from 1994 itself for children from 3-5 years of age. It was then implemented and adopted by the Municpal corporation in all its schools.
The Parent’s Education program was piloted in the HKPR Zone as well, with the parents of the children of the communities in which Pratham operated. After the pilot in Mumbai, the Parent’s Education program spread to the other urban programs under Pratham as well. Currently the core programs of Balwadi, Parent Education, Learning Camps and Library continue to run across the zone.

● Balwadi :

The Pratham Balwadi program runs for 3 hours. The timetable is decided according to the age of the children, which is generally between 3 - 5 years. We train children in language, math and free play. Physical play is also included in the balwadi curriculum because it is important for the children to develop physically. Pratham ran 56 Balwadi’s in the HKPR Zone in 2017-18.


● Library :

The objectives of the Community Library Program are to develop the reading habit among the children, increase their competencies in language and their knowledge and to increase community participation. In Pratham’s quest to build sustainable communities, where ownership and responsibility of education and sustaining learning levels of children is shared by the community, the Mumbai team switched to the volunteer based model to implement the Community Library program in 2017-18. Each community has atleast 4 volunteers. These volunteers are private tuition teachers, support class teachers, parents, students, and anganwadi teachers. One volunteer roughly distribute books to 10 children. Overall, every child through this volunteer mode gets an avg. of minimum 4 books to read in a month as against the planned target of 2 books per month per child. The programme currently runs in all the 45 communities in the Zone.


● Parent Education Programme :

This programme is conducted for parents of the children in the age group of 3 - 8 years. Various activities are conducted with the parents. They are given worksheets, which involve the children as well, so that they can solve them together. For the parents who cannot attend the community intervention workshop, a home visit is conducted to explain the daily happenings and give worksheets etc. These activities try to involve parents in the day-to-day activities of the children. The programme ran in 44 community’s throughout the zone in 2017-18.


● Urban Learning Camp/Retention Support Classes :

The urban learning camp/retention support classes are conducted for children in age group of 6 - 14 years. The children undergo training in language & math for 20 - 40 hours. The ULC conducts activities through the group learning method. In 2017 -2018 the HKPR zone had a total of 75 operational retention support class units.The Urban learning camp has the following activities.

Language:

The objective of the language camp is that the children improve their reading, writing and speaking skills. In order to achieve the classes have various topics such as oral and written comprehension, essay writing and so on.

Maths:

The objective of the maths camp is to improve the children’s ability to recognise basic numbers and perform basic mathematical operations. The children should be able to recognise numbers from 1 to 10,000 and perform basic mathematical operations such as addition, subtraction, multiplication & division, and carry-over system.

In 2017- 18 Pratham reached 5078 children through various programs in the HKPR Zone.

On 7th July 2018 , 6 employees of the National Stock Exchange visited Prathams community centre in Bandra community centre as part of their employee engagement programme. They conducted various Art, Craft and Collage activities with children from the different Pratham programs. Their names are :-MeetKumar Chandkani, Paresh Ranka, Alka Saxsena, Mohmad Aslam, Utkarsha Kanpani, Pratima Kumari.