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Dombivili man charting history through 'good writing campaign'

While PM Narendra Modi's Swachh Bharat campaign is rapidly gaining momentum and popularity, a low profile social worker's educative movement is quietly, but steadfastly showing positive results in several parts of the country. Dombivli-based Ramesh Iyer is working towards empowering children from downtrodden sections by enabling them to 'write rightly' from their school days.

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The Aksharam Charitable Foundation has trained 30 teachers to help children, especially from government and panchayat schools, improve their handwriting as well as inculcate simple ethics at the school level
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While PM Narendra Modi's Swachh Bharat campaign is rapidly gaining momentum and popularity, a low profile social worker's educative movement is quietly, but steadfastly showing positive results in several parts of the country. Dombivli-based Ramesh Iyer is working towards empowering children from downtrodden sections by enabling them to 'write rightly' from their school days.

The Aksharam Charitable Foundation led by Iyer is working on a unique initiative where children especially from government and panchayat schools are trained to improve their handwriting besides inculcating simple ethics at the school level to perform well academically as well as lead better lives. This initiative was launched in a modest way at the temple town of Mookambika near Udipi last year, and now, it is being successfully conducted in parts of Karnataka. Iyer has a team of people who have supported the 'Good Writing' campaign.

"Handwriting is an important part of education. Beautiful handwriting not only gives more marks but also increases the confidence and concentration level of a student. When students learn to write legibly they inherit a habit of reading and writing more, thus moving towards mastering the language," explained Iyer.

"Underprivileged children are deprived of many things in life as either their parents are poor or uneducated or a combination of both. Many of them are even taking up part time jobs like paper vending, milk supply etc to support their parents. These lesser privileged lag behind their counterparts in many areas in education. Often they cannot even write all the 26 letters of English in the correct manner (with scientific slant), correct size or with proper spacing. Since they cannot write neatly, reading it becomes impossible and gradually they lose interest in the language itself, which ultimately makes the difference between privileged and the lesser privileged in our highly competitive society," added Iyer.

The foundation embarked on a project to implement 'beautiful handwriting' in association with a Mumbai-based training institute 'Right Writing'. Aksharam will soon launch their initiative in Maharashtra especially in Mumbai. 'Good Writing' was conceived and conceptualised by handwriting expert V Janardhanan and a dedicated team. Now it has trained 30 teachers.

Lessons on cleanliness, manners and basic etiquette are also part of the education. At present the project involves training around 16000 students of 105 government high schools of Ramanagara (a rural district of Karnataka) and training of 1995 students of 6 high schools of the Sri Kollur Mookambika Temple Trust.

"We have already initiated talks with two big Foundations like Deshpande Foundation, Hubli and Agastya International Foundation and Kuppam in AP to implement and scale up the project. We are confident of reaching 'Right Writing' to at least 1,00,000 rural poor students in the coming academic year," Iyer hoped.

With a student faculty ratio of 10:1, the foundation pools in all available facilities. The classes are either held by clubbing all students in one hall or it is conducted in their respective classrooms. The language of instruction is English plus the local language.

"We make students write a paragraph at the beginning of the course and make them write the same paragraph in the bottom part of the same sheet after the course, thus enabling them to have an immediate comparison of what they were writing and how they are faring. We provide a scientifically developed workbook, writing pencil, scale and eraser free of cost to all students. All the children learn the basics of writing, ie., to write the letters with a scientific slant, correct size and with the correct spacing between letters and words," Iyer described.

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