Welcome to CAMaL Ka Camp, 2023!
A Summer Catch-Up Camp for Children
Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2022 data shows that only 42.8% of Grade V children can read text at Grade II level. This figure was 50.4% in 2018.
Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, ASER data showed that children's ability to read or do basic arithmetic needed substantial strengthening in India. Moreover, the pandemic exacerbated this issue, as prolonged school closures and economic disruptions in families led to major learning gaps among children (ASER 2022 data).
The summer of 2023 is an invaluable opportunity to address the issue of learning gaps and help children before the next school year begins. CAMaL ka Camp 2023 will focus on students in Grade V transitioning to Grade VI in the academic year 2023-24, as well as students in Grades IV and V.
What We Plan To Do:
In order to address the learning gap, we have meticulously designed a transformative six-week Catch-Up Camp called CAMaL Ka Camp. CAMaL being an acronym for Combined Activities for Maximized Learning and translates to ‘amazing’ in Hindi.
CAMaL Ka Camp aims to cultivate an engaging and vibrant learning environment, where children can strengthen their basic language and math skills. Our goal is to enable and empower every child so that they are able to communicate effectively.
The Campaign will Run for 6 Weeks
To ensure that we track the children's progress effectively, our volunteers will conduct assessments twice during the campaign. At the beginning of the camp, a baseline assessment will be conducted to determine where the child needs to improve, followed by an end-line assessment to determine the improvement the child has made. This will be done with the help of a comprehensive one-stop data system that will be available for our volunteers, partners, and Pratham teams to access during each stage of the campaign.
THIS YEAR’S GOAL
Our previous experiences have shown that, in a short span of time, community members – particularly young local volunteers – can offer excellent support to younger children in achieving fundamental literacy and numeracy skills. The underlying principle of our “CAMaL Ka Camp" is to reinforce, reaffirm, and demonstrate how communities can play a crucial role in supporting children's learning and development. As we strongly believe in the importance of community involvement, we will work alongside communities, panchayats, colleges, universities, and civil society organisations, to make a lasting impact. By coming together, we can create an engaging learning environment for children in villages and help them become confident and enthusiastic learners.