Invitation for half-day program at Nehru Memorial Library on EWS and their schooling, Nov 2007

Dear Uday

Greeting from Pardarshita!

Pardarshita is an organization based in east Delhi. Pardarshita sees itself as playing an instrumental role in a collective effort to fight corruption and ensure transparency and accountability in the public governance systems. In our efforts we hope we are able to empower the marginalized sections to improve their lives and livelihoods.

Our goal is to spread awareness about Right to Information and empower common people specifically the poor and working class to use the RTI and other accountability mechanisms to ensure access to his/her rights and entitlements.

As you perhaps know, the Delhi High Court issued order, dated 30th May 2007, which provides for minimum of 15% of the available seats in Public Schools that have received land at concessional rates from the Government should be reserved for the children from Economically Weaker Families. This is in continuation of a long-standing policy decision of Delhi Government and DDA to make reservation of such seats, apart of the contract for leasing out land to schools.

Unfortunately, despite a policy and the recent High Court orders, Economically Weaker Families in Delhi are still finding it very difficult to ensure access by their children to public schools.

Pardarshita has been working on this issue for over a year now. In our work we have met with some success however, not without several challenges. We would like to invite you to a discussion on the current policy of the Delhi Government on access of Economically Weaker Families to public schools.

The discussion will be focused on –

· The present implementation successes and bottlenecks of the policy and High Court orders;

· Developing a localized strategy to enable families to avail of the policy benefits; and

· To suggest changes for the way forward.

We would be honoured if you could take time out to participate in a half-day meeting organized by Pardarshita in collaboration with Nehru Memorial Museum and Library and Satarak Nagrik Sangathan. You are requested to contribute to its deliberations on the morning of Saturday 17th November 2007 from 9.30 a.m at the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, Teenmurti, New Delhi. The meeting will be followed by lunch.

We hope this meeting can contribute towards the preparation of an action plan that can make a significant contribution to broadening the base of school education for Economically Weaker Families.

Looking forward to a positive response.

With Warm Regards

Rajiv Kumar

PARDARSHITA