Sven visits Pratham school and our suppliers in India
This March, Sven travelled all the way to India to visit two places. One being Pratham, the charity we support. We give at least 1% of our profits to them, so Sven wanted to check out what was happening out there. Two being one of our suppliers, who make our gorgeous designs for us.
Pratham is a charity based in India that concentrates on beating illiteracy in children all over India. You can read more about them on our Charity page.
Sven meets the children from Pratham school.
Sven visited classrooms, where he watched the children learning maths. They were all seated, learning in pairs and enjoying their lesson. The teachers explained to him what they were studying and informed him of how the money we donate is helping them to achieve their goals. Although many of the students are young children, Sven also dropped in on a lesson for young women who would not have otherwise had the chance at basic education, let alone the vocational skills they are taught at Pratham. The charity visits households where these young women reside and offers them an enrolment on the course. Again, you can read more about this campaign on our Charity page.
Pratha
m's flagship programme, Read India, aims to help improve reading, writing and basic arithmetic skills of children in the 6-14 years age group. Even though India has taken significant strides to improve enrolment levels in schools, a large percentage of children still cannot read, write and/or do basic arithmetic. This programme is executed with the help of school teachers, workers and volunteers.
The charity visits. Households where these young women reside and offers them an enrolment on the course. Again, you can read more about this campaign on our Charity page.
In 2008-09, the campaign reached 33 million children across 19 states. It covered 305,000 out of the 600,000 villages of India and mobilised 450, 000 volunteers. In most states, out of the children who were part of the intervention, the proportion of those not able to read the alphabet, is down to zero.
In 2009-10, Read India II began. It focused on higher Grade-specific learning competencies. Read India II moved from the previous model of short-term, large-scale learning campaigns to longer, more sustained presence in villages. This was done to achieve a deeper and permanent impact. The objective is to scale up successful models at the stakeholders and government levels.
The charity visits Households where these young women reside and offers them an enrolment on the course. Again, you can read more about this campaign on our Charity page.
Our suppliers' in Jaipur
During his trip to our suppliers' in Jaipur, Sven watched the many stages of jewellery making in the vast workshop. He met some of the people who worked there, making some of our jewellery and learnt a bit more about the company itself. He watched the processes of casting with wax moulds, stone setting by hand and polishing of the pieces.
It was very interesting to see our designs being created from scratch, starting as an idea on paper or a sample, being made into gorgeous pieces of jewellery by amazingly talented people, to be taken home and proudly arranged on our stall or on the website for you to own.
It was a wonderful place to visit, full of wonder and excitement, for anyone who has visited India before, you will understand, for those of you yet to explore this amazing culture, it will be one of the best things you ever do.
We are so lucky that we have such a great relationship with our partners in India and we hope to go back again soon, so watch this space for more updates on our travels!
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