What is a Focus District?
AID TN is working in 10 districts (one-third of the state) to bring about large scale district wide change. These districts are called Focus Districts.

• Focus District Goals:
• Activities and Volunteers in EVERY village and school (about 1000-1500 in each district).
• Measurable District Wide Improvement in Education and Health Status.
• Focus District Strength:
• District Core Team that coordinates all our activities.
• Trained field execution team in every block.
• District Network of NGOs which works in close coordination with our district team.
• Regular contacts with the government at all levels.
• Support network of donors, volunteers, teachers, writers, media contacts, govt officials, and domain experts.
• Focus District Strategy: Action Research, Demonstration and Scaling up
• Integrated Block Development in 1 Block in each Focus District: To develop a wider variety of ideas and demonstrate success.
• Direct work by AID TN team in Several Blocks in the district: To demonstrate ideas across the district.
• Working with NGOs in the district to expand their/our programs: To scale up working ideas across the district.
• Working with the Government: To bring about systemic changes on a district wide scale.
• Creating support networks: To help implementation, deepen public understanding of issues, involve a larger section and pressurize for change.
• Periodic Large Scale Campaigns: To create awareness and to identify, train and bring in new people and perspectives into the movement.

What is a Project District?
In 15 districts AID TN is working on specific projects with a number of NGOs. These projects are being implemented in selected blocks in clusters of villages.

• Project District Goals:
• To support and create a network of good NGOs and people's movements to:
• Help them build up their ideas, programs and people and to share it with others in the network.
• To train their teams on our project modules to expand the scale of our programs.
• To learn successful ideas from these NGOs and scale it up.
• To create a larger resource group that can jointly work on issues of education, health and livelihood.
• To demonstrate visible changes in selected blocks and villages.
• To use the programs and base to influence and help the government bring about district wide systemic changes.
• Project District Strength:
• NEST (Network for Empowerment and Social Transformation): An independent group within AID TN created for State Level Coordination of NGO projects and networks.
• Over 60 good field implementation NGOs - selected from several hundred NGOs.
• A number of Resource Group NGOs - who not only implement programs but also develop new ideas, programs and materials.
• State Level Networks on different topics to share ideas, resources, training and problems.
• Project District Strategy:
• Select 2-5 good NGOs to work with in each project district. Support and work with them over a long period to bring about measurable visible differences in selected villages.
• Identify and work closely with "Resource Group NGOs" across the state - to help them expand their programs, to learn from them and to enable them to participate in and shape our programs.
• Develop and implement link and base building programs - like the Village Library Program and Eureka Books Program - with all the NGOs in the network.
• Networks: Forming multiple networks with independent focus issues, regular sharing meetings and training workshops, issue based campaigns led by these networks.
• Linkages with the Government at the state and district levels to help expand the NGO programs to the entire district.

In each Focus District, AID TN plans to have one Block where we demonstrate a variety of successful models for education, health and livelihood. These blocks are our action-research nurseries. In these blocks we try out a variety of programs, field test ideas before we begin to expand successful ideas to other villages. In each of these blocks, our team is much bigger and a wide variety of programs are implemented.

• Chennai Block in Chennai City
• Kaveripakkam Block in Vellore District
• Latur (Koovathur) Block in Kanchipuram District
• Minjur Block in Tiruvallur District
• Sivagangai Block in Sivagangai District
• Sulagiri Block in Krishnagiri District
• Vembakkam Block in Tiruvanamalai District