An ELF story for Christmas
Children in remote rural villages of India grow up speaking their local dialect, often very different from the language of their State. Speaking English is an even distant dream.
Our ELF (English Learning) initiative that started in 2022 focuses on reading and speaking — the usual school curriculum moves quickly from alphabets to sentences to chapters, and rural children fall behind. Since teachers in villages do not themselves have the confidence to speak in English, AID-India’s ELF program enables them to use videos that invite children to listen, repeat and sing along. Teachers liven up lessons with charts, flash cards, workbooks and role plays. ELF is a scalable program that can be implemented in government/public schools in any state of India with training (via zoom calls to teachers and site visits once or twice a year) and resource material from our team in Chennai.
Interested district administration heads (collectors) enable government schools in their region to follow the ELF program for 2-3 hrs/week in classrooms.
As of last year, 28000 children in 8 states of India have learnt English through this initiative and this year another 18000 children from 423 schools in 4 states are learning. So far the states that have been covered are Tamilnadu, Assam, Odisha, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Rajasthan, Mizoram, Puducherry and Gujarat.
You can help a child learn English for a year with Rs 500 (about $5). $1000 enables 200 children to speak with the confidence of Amitabh Bachchan, Bollywood hero from rural India in the movie Namak Halal – when he was challenged on English in the big city he retorts: “I can talk English, I can walk English and I can laugh English, because English is a very funny language.” Typically children learn to speak and read in 1-2 years of the program.
The spirit of this season, the one of sharing and giving, works its magic by making a difference in the world.
Pic. : Children in Mizoram show flash cards and describe the scene by speaking in English. The flash cards begin with vocabulary, names of objects, action pictures like the above, and narration of a story from pictures in a 4 card series.
Reading from the ELF workbook.
Role play – Vegetable vendor and customer conversing in English on price of vegetables.
Your support makes magic in distant villages of India. The Christmas celebration below is from Thirunmangalam village, one of the Focus Villages for AID’s efforts.
Merry Christmas!
AID Volunteers.
