Pratham Education Foundation (PEF) was established in 1994 to provide pre-school education to children in Mumbai slums. Over the last 16 years Pratham has grown to be India’s largest NGO in the field of primary education. Pratham currently works in 21 states across the country, with Read India being the flagship program. In 2008-09, Read India worked in 19 states reaching approximately 33 million children at its peak across about 252,000 villages. Pratham also works in other spheres, such as child labor eradication (Pratham Council for Vulnerable Children works to rescue children from vulnerable working conditions, preventing child labour and rehabilitating rescued children by providing education); pre-school education (balwaadi – centres where foundation for pre-school children is laid by familiarising them with alphabets and numbers), Computer-Assisted Learning (aims to bridge the digital divide and positively impact children’s learning levels by improving their IT knowledge and skills); vocational skilling for the youth; and Pratham Books (high quality, reasonably priced children’s books in a variety of Indian languages).

Pratham has also been catalysing the largest non-governmental household survey conducted in India, ASER (Annual Status of Education Report), to assess learning levels of rural children. Every year, ASER is carried out by approximately 30,000 volunteers in about 16,000 villages of 570 districts covering about 700,000 rural children. Today, the annual ASER reports constitute an important policy document for the Government of India, both for policy and budgetary planning. ASER is now being replicated in Pakistan, Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania.

What sets apart Pratham from other NGOs is its commitment to working on scale and working with governments to achieve set goals within set timelines. Pratham has innovated, tested, and scaled up delivery models and learning techniques almost every alternate year for the last 13 years. In 2002-03 Pratham developed the accelerated “Learning to Read” technique in most Indian languages. This was followed by “Reading to Learn”. And now it has launched the CAMaL (Combined Activities for Maximised and Accelerated Learning) methodology to facilitate accelerated learning among children.

Over the years, Pratham has become a powerful voice in the area of educational reform. Pratham’s senior team leaders are members of important policy making bodies both at the Central and State levels, including the Governing Council of Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan.

Pratham has had several film personalities on board who have kindly given of their time to help raise resources. While Ms Waheeda Rehman (Bollywood actress) has been a Goodwill Ambassador for Pratham for many years, Mr Anupam Kher (Bollywood actor) has recently accepted the role and is generously supporting us through his efforts.

Pratham’s work is supported by several national and international corporates like Credit Suisse, Deutche Bank, CITI Group, Johnson & Johnson, McKinsey & Co., IBM, Piramal Group, Ballarpur Industries Limited, and multilateral foundations like Hewlett Foundation, Micheal and Susan Dell Foundation, Oxfam Novib, UNICEF, World Bank, UNDP, UNESCO, American India Foundation and Paul Hamlyn Foundation.

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