Establishing GREEN Tribal Schools in Mountain Areas

Less than 1% of tribal children in Tamilnadu have any real opportunity for education in their native language. Exclusion of tribal languages in school education is problematic since a very large number of classrooms throughout the country have a sizable proportion of tribal children. Indigenous languages are denied a place in formal school education, despite constitutional and other policy related provisions which mandate education in indigenous languages, particularly for the linguistic minorities. The main aim of the proposed project is to create a school environment to enhance the knowledge and native languages on teaching methodologies in order to develop the educational process of the children in 5 Tribal villages lies in the southern stretch of Western Ghats hills in Theni District. Most of the tribal communities have their own languages different from the language spoken in the state where they are located. There are more than 270 such languages. One of the distinguishing features of STs is that the majority of them live in scattered habitations located in interior, remote, and inaccessible hilly and forest areas of the country. Nearly 22 % of tribal habitations have less than 100 population and more than 40 per cent have 100 to less than 300 people, while others have less than 500 people. Though tribes constitute only 8 percent of Indian population, they constitute a majority in several states and union territories and sizeable population in others.