The Gift of Education

October 14, 2010
Rukmini Banerji | Pratham

“In 1930, Gandhi walked for 23 days. At the end of it, he picked up a fist of salt. That changed India’s history forever. Today you don’t need to walk. If you pick up a book and work with kids, India’s history can change again.” – Rukmini Banerjee, Pratham.

Out of 25 million children born in India in 2010, 40% of them, 10 million children, will never learn to read. Pratham, meaning “first” in Sanskrit, was founded in 1994 by bringing together a diverse group of people in Mumbai to create a pre-school for low-income families. One year later, Pratham had over 2000 pre-schools throughout Mumbai. Today, with funding from the Gates Foundation, the Hewlett Foundation and Google.org, Pratham has reached over 34 million children in 300,000 villages and 42 cities throughout India and is changing the face of India from the grassroots village level to education policy and fiscal spending.

Join us on October 14th at 2pm at the Microsoft Campus to hear from visionary and social entrepreneur Rukmini Banerjee about how Pratham has become the largest non-governmental agency in India influencing education, and why Pratham has managed to not just survive, but thrive in an extraordinarily competitive and sometimes hostile environment. Learn about the launch of the ASER report (the largest education impact survey in India started by Pratham), Pratham Books (a spin-off from Pratham to create quality low cost educational books) and Pratham’s data driven results-oriented model, which chooses to maximize reach and effectiveness by working closely with, rather than against, the government of India.

Speaker Details

RUKMINI BANERJI
Program Director, Pratham; Head, ASER Center

Rukmini Banerji has been with Pratham since 1997. She is responsible for Pratham’s program activities in several major states in north and east India. Rukmini has been in the core team of the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) since it was launched in 2005 and currently heads the ASER Center, Pratham’s research unit. ASER, a national survey of children’s learning levels, has been recognized internationally for its innovativeness and impact on education policy. Rukmini has represented Pratham and ASER at several international forums, including the Clinton Global Initiative in New York in 2008 and the Fast Track Global Initiative meeting in Copenhagen in 2009. Rukmini has extensive field experience both in program implementation as well as in evaluation, survey and research. Initially trained as an economist in India, she was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University and completed her PhD at the University of Chicago. She did her post doctoral work at the Population Research Centre at the University of Chicago and later worked as a program officer at the Spencer Foundation.