9th Oct: At today's Sajeevta Sunday Bookclub we were all engrossed in hearing about the books being read. The children have figured out how to select a book that works for them, that they are excited to keep reading and excited to recommend to others. Books presented today were in Abdul Kalam, The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, HBR on Project Management, The Secret, Aditi and the one-eyed Monkey, and, Rusty goes to London.

I was also very happy to present stipend cheques to our... first completors of Sajeevta's Internship for Employability Programme, thank you to the team at http://www.argusoft.com/ for collaborating with us on this. If you are also interested in having a Sajeevta Student as an intern at your company please contact me. The children will submit a written application and CV before being interviewed by your team, and must produce an interim report and final presentation to complete the internship of around 30 days. Sajeevta Foundation supports with covering the stipend for their transport and daily allowance. Hoping to hear from interested employers who can take a lead on building aspirations and employability.

I write with excitement and these words hold the love to learn with our love to read books. The Sunday Sajeevta Book Club is running superbly, there are number of highlights to share. Each week this month we've had a series of super guest-readers: Saravanan Velusamy joined us as Sajeevta Staff and presented on "How Children Succeed" by Paul Tough, Rajeev Doraswamy a student from Pingry School in New Jersey joined us for two sessions and introduced the "Game of Thrones" book...s, Priya Doraswamy who works in Book Publishing enthralled us with some of her favourite books, and today we had Yash and Shruti from Ahmedabad who told us how Ayn Rand's "The Fountainhead" and "The Secret" by Rhonda Byrne has inspired them.

Surveys show that around half of India's children in rural areas reach class V without being able to read fluently, this has been a long-term problem. I've seen the problem myself and it is saddening to see excitable children wanting to understand all the text about them and wanting to tell you so much more than their vocabularly allows. Thankfully Pratham Education Foundation has, over many years, developed a approach for teaching that first assesses children then groups t...hen in their learning-levels and then uses engaging activities for them to learn maths and language with meaning.

This weekend I was excited to see the five Sajeevta children that joined Anand Niketan School-Sughad at their Annual Sports Day, but which ones are they in the photo? we can't tell, and that for us is a success: for children of hugely different financial and social backgrounds learning happily and successfully together. It has been a long and difficult journey, these same children and their parents were all there today, smiling at me, the same parents that I've worked with so... they don't miss the bus, get clothes cleaned for school, have pencils and erasers in the school-bags, and all along with struggling to find a shelter to live in, taking mini-loans to cope with health-shocks, and getting used to all the new routines and habits a great school demands.

Today we were excited to be at IIT-Gandhinagar to support Pratham Education Foundation's "Lakhon Mein Ek" campaign: to make visible the learning levels of India's children and promote reading and maths competency for all children. This is a great way to excite the community, parents and children about ways to solve the huge problem of children not being able to read fluently or manage basic maths like double digit subtraction. Sajeevta Foundation was glad to share its own e...xperiences of working in the community to convince parents to support education for every child and also how we've found the Pratham Kit of teaching and learning materials an exciting set of resources for children, and how we ensure children are learning at their level at the Sajeevta Learning Centre. I encourage you all to learn more about Lakhon Mein Ek and get involved after a click: www.lakhonmeinek.org/