Lunch at Fatehpur Sikri
Fatehpur Sikri is a World Heritage site near the Taj Mahal and Agra. More photos are in the last half of this album.
Parikrma article
Below is the article that Matt Kaye wrote (and I helped with) for the Wharton Journal:
On the Wharton GIP trip to India students visited a model primary school in Bangalore. The school is highly selective, has a 98% attendance rate with strong test scores, and is home to the best-behaved students that this author has ever seen in any part of the world.
The remarkable part of our visit is that these extraordinary positive and disciplined children all come from local slums; the average home is 100 square feet with a montly income of $15 supporting five people. Students frequently come from families dealing with alcoholism and other severe dysfunctions.
Bangalore, the heart of “India’s Silicon Valley,” is home to the Parikrma Humanity Foundation. The Foundation manages four private schools for the poorest of the poor children in the city. There is no shortage of opportunity: Bangalore’s slums contain over $1.2 million people and are growing by 10,000 people per day (largely due to migration from rural areas). Resident children lack opportunities to lift themselves out of poverty through education.
For example, 70% of students who attend traditional government schools in the slums drop out before the 8th grade, and absenteeism can reach 85%. Students often drop out to help support their families, but even those who graduate are often illiterate. The economic revolution in Bangalore has little direct impact on these students, as 90-95% of all Information Technology jobs go to graduates of private schools.
Against this grim backdrop, Shukla Bose, the former CEO of RCI, started the Parikrma Foundation in 2003 and has grown it to four schools with over 600 students aged 5-14.
Parikrma has had astounding success: using an English-based curriculum, the schools boast a 98% attendance record with an attrition rate of less than 1%. The curriculum aims to build skills and character through traditional means, real-life experiential programs, and the arts. The program directly impacts hundreds of children who attend the Foundation’s four schools in Bangalore but, equally importantly, it serves as a model for improving the other 900,000 schools across India.
In pilot programs where Parikrma has assisted at existing schools, 10th grade pass rates have jumped from 10% to 50%. Ms. Bose has brought her deep experience in corporate management to achieve this.
Because Parikrma serves as a proof of concept, it is important to prove that outcomes are a product of the Parikrma model rather than cherry-picking high potential students from the slum. The school does not compete with local government schools; instead, it canvasses slums to find children whose families are not planning to send them to school at all, in effect taking the least desirable candidates and completely transforming them.
The Parikrma children come from diverse backgrounds, many of which involve neglect, abuse, and complete lack of medical care. Some are orphans and some have alcoholic parents.
Education is only one aspect of Parikrma’s Circle of Life; the three other components are nutrition, health care, and family care. Since balanced nutrition is critical to the children’s physical and intellectual development, the schools provide each child with two full meals and one snack every day (90% of total daily calorie needs are provided during the school day).
Additionally Parikrma provides immunizations, regular check-ups, and hospitalization when necessary. Since many children come from traumatic and abusive homes, the school has professional counselors on staff to help the children address emotional and mental health issues.
Finally, Parikrma assists children’s families by offering alcohol and addiction programs and connecting parents with local employers and microfinance organizations.
Parikrma’s goal is to support the children until they are at an age and skill level to earn a decent living. Through their 360° Development Program, they aim to level the playing field for the poorest urban children in India. Parikrma will enable its children to break their cycle of poverty and contribute to the thriving Indian and global economy.
India’s reputation as a low cost location to do business extends to the Parikrma model. The Foundation estimates that supporting one child in their program costs approximately $330/year; this compares very favorably with US urban public education (New York City: $13,000/year per student) and private education (Wharton: $42,180/year plus bulkpacks). Put another way, one MBA student’s Wharton tuition could support about 125 students in Bangalore for a year.
During the India GIP, the Wharton group met some of the most influential and prominent people in India, from the Chairman of Infosys to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. However, our most personal and meaningful lesson on the current problems and bright future of the nation came from the children at Parikrma.
We were so impressed during our visit that GIP participants contributed over $7,000 to Parikrma after we returned home – enough to support an entire school for over a month.
If you would like to learn more about Parikrma, please visit www.parikrmafoundation.org.