About 8 Day Academy

8-Day Academy is an initiative to empower people through education. Essentially, it’s just 8 days of targeted workshops on various topics. It is the brainchild of Masarat Daud-Jamadar.

Currently, 8-Day Academy (8DA) has been taught in Fatehpur Shekhavati in Rajasthan, India. In January 2011, two new sessions of 8DA will be taught in Dhaka, Bangladesh. The aim is to make 8DA a global education movement and allow for more people to join in, develop content for new 8DAs and to teach them.

While 8DA model is very relevant and applicable in urban areas, but so far 8DA has been implemented in rural India. Based on the needs of a community, a 8DA can be created; it’s very useful in rural areas where people don’t have the luxury to wait for four years for a university education to become usable. The 8DA has also given hope to many girls who are bound to do housework and fieldwork which left them unable to attend a regular school; in a 8DA, they learn new skills and earn knowledge that previously would have been difficult to do.

8DA does not intend to replace regular schooling nor does it consider itself to be an alternative. It is a gap-filler in communities where education is expensive. Also, not everything needs years to be learnt. 8DA has proven to be effective as a teacher-training method in village schools where teachers are as young as 15. They are taught Computers, Public Speaking, Idea development etc which enables personal and professional growth.

Apart from making education accessible, 8DA has also worked for the cause of making education a right for girls. By Masarat’s own presence in the field work, many parents have enrolled their girls into schools. Also, 8 days doesn’t seem too long, so parents are willing for their daughters to participate in 8DAs instead of full-time enrolment at schools. These 8 days often become the reason why more girls enrol into schools as the parents and children see how education can change lives in such a short time.

Impact

• Initially, 8DA was taken to a selected town in Shekhavati area. Typically, schools have Computers as a subject in Grade 9 and 10 where primarily, the students are taught how to start and shutdown a computer! Because of the first 8DA in Feb 2009 where 17 teachers learnt Computers (documentation, paint/drawing, Internet, theory of computing), now this school has Computers as a subject from Grade 3 onwards. By Grade 6, these children are easily able to use the Computer for their projects and producing assignments.
• After the 8DA of Communication & Public Speaking, the participation among children in their school activities increased drastically. A school where five students would participate in all big events, now has 95% of Grade 3 to 6 students volunteering at events.
• One of the 8DA students completed two levels of Computing through 8-Day Academy and now runs a Computer Institute, educating more than 300 children.
• There’s been a wave of change for people in Fatehpur Shekhavati area who are now more focused on education and are beginning to give it priority—even for girls. One of the 8DA graduate started a night school teaching young boys who work as labourers and have never been to a ‘real school’. One of the boys who was taught Open-source programming is now teaching the same to his friends at the night school! As part of the bigger goals of 8DA, Masarat has started a small library in a local house where these street children have access to books to read and to check out for a few days. In 3 weeks, students in this night school have increased from 2 to 16! One of the boys learnt how to read in just one week and got a new job that paid him USD55 till USD165.