Another edition of “Raahi – Education through Travel” was conducted on 16th September by Vision India Foundation fellows working with the government schools in Mathura and Vrindavan, Uttar Pradesh.
After a successful first edition of #Raahi, the community and the teachers could see the differences in their child’s knowledge and behaviour. The second edition of Raahi Yatra had 115 students and 10 teachers coming from two upper primary government schools situated in Pani Gaon and Bhootiya, Vrindavan. The children visited Shri Krishna Janmabhoomi, Mathura Museum and Parmeshwari Devi Dhanuka Vidyalaya, Vrindavan. They were given guided tours by the team and teachers. The theme of this yatra was “History” and the purpose was to introduce to children the rich culture and heritage of the place they belong to, Vrindavan, and to inspire a sense of pride in the history of which they are the natural descendants.
The unique thing about this edition of Raahi was also the fact that it was jointly owned by the government teachers who themselves came forward and asked our team to conduct Raahi for their villages’ students. It was a welcoming change to witness the government teachers, who are blamed for being lethargic and unproductive, giving their sunday to travel with their students right from 7am to 6pm to make Raahi productive for them. It was a day filled with happiness, discussions, learning history by traveling to the places, and children asking questions and singing educational stories during the bus journey.
We are happy to share that “Raahi” is bringing small yet effective changes in children’s understanding of their surroundings and imparting knowledge of the subjects in a more practical way. The community and the government teachers have also started to join us in this initiative, which is a welcoming change we wanted to bring.
What is #Raahi?
Raahi is one of the 12 educational interventions designed and being implemented in the government schools of Mathura and Vrindavan as part of Vidyalaya Vistaar (विद्यालय विस्तार) initiative by Bharat Vikas Nyas and supported by Vision India Foundation.
Education is the expansion of the horizon of perception. For this to happen, exposure is the key component and travel is one of the best way to get that exposure. Today, we see a lot of travel bloggers sharing their experiences with the world and they agree that their knowledge about surroundings increased by many folds just by traveling. Keeping such evidences and research in mind, our team at @Vidyalaya Vistaar has designed “Raahi”. As part of it we take students from the government schools on a theme-based Yatra – with the help of local, self-sustaining and socially responsible private schools and the community. The themes planned for Raahi yatras are history and civics, culture, entrepreneurship and science – the things that can be better understood by experiencing them as compared to reading them from a book.