About Us

With an estimated 10 million children not going to school, the effort required to decrease that number is huge. Here is our small effort. One school at a time.

Pick Me, Click Me, Educate Me! is an endeavor to use digital photography as a social reform tool to create awareness of the existing educational situations in rural Bihar. This project also aims to spread the joy of education and building communities for collaborative learning in rural Bihar. The value of education resulting in giving them the power to dream is an outcome of the project that the project seeks to achieve over the time.

This project serves to provide a platform to people from different backgrounds (photographers, writers, educationists, social workers, donors etc) to collaborate. It allows to utilize the work done by one group (like photographers who go to these locations and shoot), for discussion with the others who are not able to.It therefore allows aims for promoting , discussing, writing about, and finally donating (again not the prime focus) for , the issue of child education.

Pick Me, Click Me, Educate me is to provide with stories from the location, and through photographs to help spread a) value of education b) the existing avenues and facilities and c) a possible word for donation.

Philosophy
Not all of us have the privilege of going through a great education. Many years there are millions of children across the state who start going to school, but fall out for some reason. In extremely poverty struck districts and towns, the rate is a lot higher. There are many reasons behind it. Lack of enthusiasm is a major cause. There have been considerable efforts by the various governments and other organizations to tackle this issue.

Being aware of the existing realities, accepting the current situation, identifying the areas of effort application and understanding things at a level rooted in the rural community would go a long way in the creation of a proper channel towards economic uplifting.

This platform is thus also to celebrate success stories, get inspired by stories of courage, and motivate others to understand the value of child education.The focus is on education, due to the underlying principle that a proper education is a key to a progressive society.

Why Bihar?
Being amongst the most economically backward state, The current literacy stands at 47%. This is the lowest in the country. Bihar has a long way to go before it can catch up with the other states. Being constantly struck by internal violence and natural calamities has not helped either. There has been considerable efforts from the various government and the central government to uplift the current situation. However those efforts are not enough.

Bihar, ironically sends a large number of students to the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology, the Indian Institutes of Management, in the Indian Administrative Services, the universities in USA and other countries. A lot of these students settle either abroad or in other parts of the country.

Pick Me, Click Me, Educate Me! also seeks out to this community to be more aware of the situations back home and be involved in whatever way possible towards education of children in rural Bihar.

History
The project was initiated in the summer of 2007, by Documentary photographer Kshitiz Anand. This website went live on the 1st of May 2009.