06 July 2008

Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata: UNV and The Times of India newspaper are cooperating to mobilize volunteer teachers in four major Indian cities.

In India there are 42 million children aged 6 to 10 not attending school; dropout rates and adult illiteracy are also high. The UNV-supported Times of India 'Teach India' campaign is designed to increase access to primary-level education by matching volunteers to educational NGOs in their local areas. 

Achieving universal primary education is one of the UN's eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). In each of the four cities UNV is placing Indian national UNV volunteers as project managers who will liaise with NGOs, schools, the private sector and other partners to apply the 'Teach India' campaign strategy.

In addition, UNV is assisting in designing volunteer management tools such as databases and administrative procedures. It is also working with Times of India to raise general awareness of educational issues in India.

While UNV provides technical support, local NGOs will be responsible for fielding the volunteers. The Times of India will finance the campaign and oversee its overall implementation. The campaign was launched on 6 July with a front page article, a dedicated website and an editorial by UNV.

The three-month campaign will provide a practical platform for Indian volunteers in Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata. These cities have large numbers of educationally-deprived children and adults and high disparities between rich and poor. However, each also has a huge potential pool of volunteers and well-established NGO infrastructures.

With a circulation of 2.4 million, The Times of India is the world’s highest-circulating English language broadsheet newspaper. This year's 'Teach India’ initiative builds on its 'Lead India' talent-spotting campaign from 2007, "a hunt to identify new leaders for a new India".

During 2007 there were 280 UNV volunteers who worked in India, 274 of them Indian nationals. Following the devastating Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004, UNV experts were deployed at the district level to train half a million village volunteers in how to react better to natural disasters.

At the policy level, UNV has been supporting the Government of India as it drafts its National Policy on the Voluntary Sector. It closely cooperates on other areas such as supporting research that quantifies the social and economic contribution made by volunteerism to the Indian economy, in other words integrating the concept of volunteerism into development planning.

Visit the 'Teach India' website here.

Click below to download a PDF copy of the 6 July launch edition front cover.