A year ago, if you had walked into the government school in Periyakuppum village with a book in hand, a frightened Sivakami would have run away from you. Today, she is the first to run confidently towards visitors to show off her new reading skills!

When AID India started the Eureka Child reading program in her school, 10-year-old Sivakami could not read. Her parents cannot read and so she had no help at home. The Eureka Child program got Sivakami excited with its attractive reading materials and activities. Within weeks, her reading skills improved – Sivakami moved up from words, to sentences and to small stories. We gave her an “I can Read” certificate which she displays proudly.

It is with great pleasure that I write this letter to update you on the progress of the Eureka Child initiative. The project has taken off to a flying start. With your support we were able to raise the required $266,000 to be able to fully avail of the CIFF matching grant to launch the program in full scale. As you will see below, the past few months have been very hectic and productive. The Eureka Child program has been implemented in more than 8000 schools across 10 districts in Tamil Nadu. The program reaches out to ~1 million children and is working towards improving their reading, math and pre-primary skills at a rapid pace.

Project Implementation Status

The first six months also saw us finalize, produce and distribute lots of new educational materials. To ensure that teacher uptake is easy and efficient, significant efforts were spent in customizing existing Eureka materials to integrate successfully with the government’s Activity Based Learning system. There has been a tremendous response and positive feedback to the new educational materials. Teachers say that these materials have helped them get all children to read and they progress much faster. Teachers have also found the Eureka Child material easier to work with and quite effective! Several teachers, headmasters and Government Block Supervisors telephoned our office and our state teams and commended the quality of reading materials given for primary school students. We are heartened by this response and are continuing to incorporate suggestions from the field into our new material generation.

The excitement and buzz about program has also been noticed by the State Government! Recently, State Director of Elementary Education, released letter to all district officials not only endorsing the Eureka Child program, but also directing them to actively participate in its implementation and monitoring. Our ultimate aim is to work with the government to eventually implement this program on a state-wide scale (in a 3-4 yr time frame).

As we move through the next half of the year, our field and state level teams will be focused on continuously monitoring the progress of each school and each child as they move through this program. Based on the positive response from teachers and students alike thus far, we are confident of a marked improvement in reading and math skill levels by the end of the first year. We are also beginning to plan the next phase of scale up and intensification of the Eureka Child initiative to 13000 schools Year 2 and Year 3. The program will then reach 3.3 million children. The AID India team is currently busy planning and chalking out the logistics of this tripling of scale.

We are counting on your continued support as we embark on this exciting phase of reaching out to all the 3 million children in 10 districts of Tamil Nadu. Just think about it, in two years, 1 in 3 children in Tamil Nadu will be touched by your support through the Eureka Child initiative. Our fundraising target for next year is an ambitious $666,000, more than double last year’s target. Raising this amount will help us tap into the $2 million matching grant that CIFF has already approved to support the Year 2 scale up efforts. Again your support will be leveraged 3 times by CIFF support

We do hope that you will not only increase your contribution towards this initiative, but also recommend this exciting initiative to your friends and family as a beautiful way to cap the giving season. Through the Eureka Child initiative it costs <$1 per year to support a child and just $150 to support an entire school!

Together we can ensure that children like Sivakami grow up with self confidence and into a bright future.

Sincerely,
AID Volunteers.

PS: Please visit www.EurekaChild.org for a more detailed progress report on the project.
Donations can be made online at www.EurekaChild.org or
Checks can be snail mailed to the address above

AID is 501(c)3 federally registered non-profit and all donations to AID are tax deductible.