Education
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Vocational and Livelihood Skills
From Class 6th onwards, we start to identify student’s interest in the three core areas – sports, agriculture, or Government competitive exams to start their vocation-specific learning towards a career pathway.
Sports and Coach Development
After spending a few years in sports training, it becomes clear to us and to the students whether his/her interest lies in sport. If we find that the student has potential, we provide opportunities to the student to participate in the State, District, and National level sports trials. Else we prepare the student for a career in coaching to become employable as a sports coach in the future.
Agriculture and Allied (Food forestry, conservation, etc)
Students at Riverside Natural School are given responsibilities to grow particular crops, linked to the school menu. They are expected to prepare the land, plant, care for the crops, and manage the harvest and post-harvesting operations under guidance. They are also taught to use technology in farming. The idea is to make the students ready for a career in sustainable farming and allied services which are on the rise in the Indian economy.
Government Jobs (armed forces, police, nursing etc.)
For students who are academically inclined, we encourage them to opt for these competitive exams with a plan to provide specialized coaching to crack the respective competitive entrance exams. These are the students who are typically in the top percentile in the school.
Riverside Natural School
Education forms the core of our work. Established in 2016, Riverside Natural School started on rented premises to provide education to 90 children from impoverished families in Mandla, Madhya Pradesh to 533 in 2021 when the school reopened post-pandemic.
Mrida also offers residential schooling to students from vulnerable families in rural regions. The hostel students are provided with afterschool study support. The after-school studies provide an opportunity for the teachers to use remedial measures for those lagging in certain subjects or to bring up the newly admitted students at par with the rest of the class and ensure that no one stays behind in studies. The extra efforts spent on students lagging in studies give them encouragement to do better and ensures the mental wellness of the children to cope up with academic challenges.
We diligently maintain multi-year data on the academic, medical and family of every child for impactful analysis of our grassroots development programs.
Our Education Approach
The school emphasizes on developing the overall well-being of the children along with the educational qualification. The school follows the Madhya Pradesh State Board school certification academic levels to track student progress from Class 1st to 8 with firm commitment to extend till Class 10th this academic year (2021-22)
Foundational Skills
Till Class 5, the school’s focus is on developing, reading, writing and numeracy skills. Our medium of instruction is Hindi but we have ensured that children get adequate exposure to reading, writing and communicating in English through films, in-person interactions and dedicated time every day to practise the language.
Most children who join us midway are behind the grade-level and it takes one year of effort to bring the child at a level where she can join her age-appropriate classroom. Other than academics, the focus is on finding joy in learning through participation in various activities on campus.
Intermediate Skills
From Classes 6 to 8, children are exposed to a variety of professions and skills linked to those in the vocational and livelihood skills program. Children are encouraged to play for the various school and academy teams and work in the 3.5 acre agricultural land that the school has leased.
wellbeing & Holistic Development
Mrida places a strong emphasis on the wellbeing and holistic development of its students studying in Riverside Natural School. The residential schooling model is a support to those children who have been admitted to the shelter home by their parents who struggle to meet the requirements of family in terms of food and basic amenities of clothing and shelter. We have also admitted children from single parent and vulnerable family backgrounds spotted by our visiting school admissions team during house surveys in the region.
We evaluate children’s body mass index (BMI) during the admission of the student. We also conduct exercise for children in the very first month after admission. Food consumption is carefully monitored, and we follow a menu that is prepared each month based on availability of seasonal fruits and vegetables and pulses. Milk, eggs and daliya are served daily for breakfast with beetroot and jaggery being served every day to tackle the problem of anaemia. We track children’s BMI on a monthly basis with special attention to those children whose improvement in BMI is slower than others.
Under the care and guidance of our school and hostel teachers, children go about their wellbeing tasks in a disciplined manner. This includes practising upa-yoga, meditation, jogging each morning, bathing with neem leaves for skin itchiness or rashes, sitting in vajraasan position after dinner and before sleeping every day. On holidays, we conduct sports, indoor games, arts and crafts, discussions, movie screenings and watch football matches on the television.
As the children continue to grow, we can see that the eldest among them have begun to take up leadership roles to take care of the responsibilities in the hostel towards health and hygiene practices by all children with love and care for the younger ones thus validating our approach towards their holistic personal development.
Practices followed at the Shelter Home:
The Shelter Home is run along with the community. We follow practices that are designed, keeping in mind physical and mental health and well-being at the core. Some of them are as follows:
- All children practise Surya Namaskars daily
- A carefully designed food menu in consultation with a nutritionist that has a healthy mix of fruits and vegetables
- The mess operations are managed by the children themselves.
- Prayers before the start of every meal
- A time-table that takes into account specific needs of every child
- Access to medical health facilities through the local community health centre and a private general practitioner. For specialized services, we travel to Mandla town (40 kms away) )or Jabalpur (120 kms away).
