Can communities mobilize for schooling and learning?

Pratham is a non-governmental organization in India that has worked for 25 years with the goal of achieving “every child in school and learning well”. This chapter outlines three distinct phases of the evolution of Pratham’s bottom-up efforts to mobilize communities for supporting children’s education. In the first phase (1996 to 2000), Pratham was largely focussed on achieving access. In the next decade, Pratham’s work was aimed at expanding participation, engaging communities, and exploring the links between awareness, assessment, and action. From 2010 onwards, Pratham has been exploring how to ensure effective learning and achieve durable impact. For each phase, the chapter describes and analyses the key learning and lays out lessons for the way forward.