Pratham which means ‘First’ in Hindi is the largest non-profit organisation working in the primary education sector in India. Our mission is ‘Every child in school and learning well”. Set up in 1994 in conjunction with UNICEF, Pratham seeks to improve the quality of education across India and to ensure that all children in the country are not only attending school but thriving in school. Pratham’s main aim is to provide basic literacy and numeracy to India’s 100 million illiterate children and raise the standards of education across the country by focusing our attention on the children’s needs.

Today Pratham operates programmes in rural and urban communities in 19 out of 28 states in the country. By working with volunteers, school teachers and local governments Pratham has developed low-cost and scalable methods that ensure hundreds of thousands of children across the country get the quality of education they deserve.

Our flagship programme Read India was launched in 2007 on a national scale in response to findings of the first Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2005-2006 which found that despite high school enrolment rates, less than 50 percent of primary school children reached the learning level expected of their age. Through Read India Pratham has so far helped over 34 million children reach their age appropriate learning level. Utilising its ground-breaking teaching techniques, the Read India campaign is efficiently run by mobilising over 450,000 volunteers who currently work in more than half of India’s 600,000 villages. Working with state governments in India, teachers and volunteers have been trained in Pratham’s ground breaking teaching techniques that help children improve their learning levels in 4-8 weeks. Through the Read India programme, a mere £10 can educate a child for a whole year.

Pratham has won numerous awards including the CNN-IBN Indian of the Year award in the public service category along with the fourth Gold EMPI-Indian Express Indian Innovation Award for Read India in 2009, Henry Kravis award for leadership in 2010 and MadhavChavan, Pratham’s co-founder and CEO, and Pratham were the recipient of the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship in 2011.

Pratham UK is the overseas chapter of Pratham. It focuses on fundraising to support Pratham’s work in India, while also maintaining the public awareness of the charity’s work in the UK.

Pratham UK
58-60 Kensington Church Street
London W8 4DB
Email: [email protected]
Website:www.pratham.org.uk
Telephone: 020 73683396/ 020 73683395