Education is a vital component for maintaining individuality and growing up in life. It is important for making a career in life. Even though some of the fields like sports do not require much of intellectual capability, yet a basic level of education is necessary even for them. At least understanding a language, conveying the language through writing or speech is an important part of self-development which can only be acquired through education.
India’s education sector has been steadily growing over the past few decades. The literacy rate according to the census data of 2011 has revealed that the literacy rate in India has increased to 74.04%.Even though the literacy rate has increased, it needs to be noted that the definition of being a literate as per India’s constitution has remained feeble. According to the Indian constitution, any one above age 7 who can read and write in any language with an ability to understand is considered a literate. Thus, even though there has been a progress in terms of the literacy rate, the actual education level of the people in India has remained poor. Thus, in order to help them, several NGOs have come up who are working towards the development of the society in the same direction. There are several NGOs which have come up to improve the education level of the children like CRY, Teach for India, Pratham, Barefoot college India, Save the children, Lakshyam etc.
These NGOs are helping India to become a nation that can compete with the developed nations in terms of academic knowledge, development of human capital and improvement of the overall education system in India. Even though governmenet has made several initiatives in this direction, however, government alone cannot change the current scenario. In order to bridge the gap, these NGOs have come up to improve the scenario.
One such NGO in India for children education is ‘Lakshyam- Hands to Hearts’. Since its inception in 2004, LAKSHYAM, a non-governmental organization, established itself for the welfare of the society, with a focus on the development of children, education, and women empowerment. To help rural women learn easily employable skills. They have worked on several cases to improve the education in India. One of their aims is to give children a conducive and progressive environment for their development without any shortcomings. That means a total self-development of a child right from the early stage. They aim to develop a society in which they want the highly qualified teachers to teach the students who have not been privileged in the society. By this, they aim to develop a standard system of education in India.
Over the years, Lakshyam has expanded and strengthened its inventive programs and initiatives to bring a practical turnaround in the present social structure. The activities that the organization is actively involved in are various camps, workshops and programs that are designed to cater to the need-based approach. Lakshyam is currently working in 7 states across India and recently commenced its international chapter with Scotland. Two stores in Aberdeen, Scotland showcase our handcrafted products which have definitely given us a global platform.To broaden its horizons, Lakshyam enhanced its efforts by initiating few major programs to strengthen its impact amongst the not-so-privileged masses. It has three programs running under, the Butterfly program which focuses on to integrate the two pivotal building blocks of a healthy child, Development and Participation. Education and monthly activities like dance, drawing and painting, games and puppet show are organized to keep children engaged in coming to school. Not just this they do also provide computer learning class by IIT students and even summer camps are organized.
With that, they have other program running for children which is Toy Library, whose main aim is to bring back the essence of childhood. Every child needs that environment to nurture and grow, and playing is one of its parts. And this program involves the placement of toy boxes where people can donate toys and educational books. They have around 13 centres across 11 states and last year they have collected and delivered around 2,50,000 toys and books.
Apart from this Lakshyam is also focusing on women empowerment and upliftment and providing them vocational training to economically support them through Rooh program.
Lakshyam has become one of the few organisations in India which have worked hard simultaneously in various domains of child and women development.
