Previous blog entry – in case you missed it.
Lights Camera and Action !
The day finally came when my first visit to Narayanpet happened. I met with Pramod and Venkatesh (also from Alokit) at the PV Narasimha Rao flyer on a September morning, embarking on a long ride to Narayanpet. Our first destination was the district collectors office.
We had an appointment with the district collector, Smt Hari Chandana Dasari garu. Luckily we had a smooth ride and reached the collector’s office in time . We met with Smt Hari Chandana and had a fruitful discussion regarding the project and the plan moving forward wrt distribution of books, training and the schools selected etc. She was very supportive and wanted children to have access to a good library and develop an interest in reading. She is a very dynamic person constantly working to improve the very many facets of the district.
We also met with a government officer , who would facilitate with the arrangement of training and the logistics of coordinating with the schools.
The latter part of the visit was the best as I did some school visits and met some wonderful passionate teachers. Here are a few glimpses from my visit.
The first was a visit to the government school in Danwada, Telangana. The school teachers had come up with their own Teacher Learning Material (TLM) that would help facilitate building strong concepts of fundamentals on Literacy.
Children answering questions enthusiasitcally 
FRY words 
Teacher learning material 
The head master interacting with children 
Teacher learning material
The headmaster of the school was very supportive of Alokits FLN (Foundational literacy and numeracy )program. He showed us the monthly reading and writing assessment exams prepared by the teachers to continuously evaluate children and figure out the improvement strides. The school meticulously also prepared course content to address the gaps in student fundamentals. What I liked most was the headmasters involvement of the community which includes the parents as well, to support the study plan of the children.
Narayanpet has some schools that cater to the tribal areas as well. One such was the Manipur Thanda. A Thanda is a clustered settlement or community of Banjaras (the local tribe present).
The multi grade multi level classroom. 
Pramod, Ms. Radhika (teacher) , Elizabeth {Alokit), Amzad (Alokit) at Manipur Thanda school
There is only one classroom in the school with children from the first to fifth grade. Alokit has trained the teachers to do level based teaching for both Math and language. This means the children irrespective of the grade they belong to, are grouped based on their English knowledge and math knowledge levels. And the teacher teaches each group according to their level. Here Ms. Radhika has been religiously
following the technique and the children are happy learning under her.
Next we visited Kamsanpally where we met Ms. Swetha and the HM Mr. Kistaiah. Here too we saw good TLMs created by the teaching staff and an enthusiastic principal who is devoted to the improvement of the foundational skills of the children. The training and support from Alokit has helped these schools to be innovative with their methods of teaching.
Finally the D Day arrived – the formal inauguration of our libraries happened on 21st Sept 2022.
The school opted for an in classroom library due to lack of space and had created a beautiful Joy of Reading nook. The children present were so excited about the books and were waiting for the library to be inaugurated.
Ms. Hari Chandana Garu – District Collector of Narayanpet graced the occasion and inaugurated the library at the school in Baherpet, Narayanpet . The collector arrived and engaged with the students regarding the library and made sure the children also cut the ribbon along with her thus formally inaugurating the library. Here is a tweet from her supporting the initiative
Smt Hari Chandana garu 
The DEO interacting with the team 
Children interacting with the collector
Yours truly was asked to light the lamp once the collector left and perform a small pooja praying to the supreme power for the success of the endeavor and beautiful beginnings. The teachers, children and I recited a sloka (prayer verse) on Goddess Saraswati (the goddess of learning) jointly and threw open the library .
Paying obeiscances to the supreme 
The library thrown open for all
Check out the next part for the rest of the Narayanpet journey