Oprah network funds for special district school

KOLKATA: About 50 children sit together, reciting the day’s lesson at a small primary school in a North 24-Parganas village. To them, America’s billionaire celebrity Oprah Winfrey’s name means little.
But it is Winfrey’s Angel Network that has made Pallishree Vidyaniketan at Amdanga a reality. Her network funds many such literacy projects for developing nations.Funds are collected mostly by school students across the United States.
The Amdanga school opened about two months ago and aims to house at least 235 children. The project has been undertaken by the Madhyamgram-based Centre for Communication and Development, which has been working on literacy projects for almost three decades.
The centre runs 63 feebased primary schools in eight districts in West Bengal.
Parents pay about Rs 500 per year and all schools are built with 30 per cent local contribution. “There are over 9,000 children enrolled in our schools, all of whom later join secondary schools. Our pupil-teacher ratio at 1:33 is one of the best in the state,� said CCD founder Swapan Mukherjee. All the schools follow the same curriculum designed by the CCD board. Examinations are held on the same day with questions papers set by the board.
Answer scripts are submitted to the board and scrutinised centrally. Besides, there are four creches for children between three and five for working mothers in Deganga, Amdanga and at Barasat I.
CCD runs programmes as diverse as education, health care, motivating and forming self-reliant groups for better farming and irrigation. Mukherjee has sustained the movement by working through local organisations.
“We move in after surveys to determine what they need, train some of them, guide them for about three years and then move out. The projects then sustain themselves,� Mukherjee explained.
The organisation has provided employment through CCD sponsored activities to 629 people, 367 of whom are teachers. Though North 24 Parganas continues to be its stronghold, CCD now works in about 40 panchayats in nine districts through 761 local organisations. There are currently over 500,000 people under its project umbrella.