Education India Project #30067

Help 750 child labourers go to school, not work

by Child Rights and You

Help 750 child labourers go to school, not work

Project Report | Dec 17, 2018
Kalyan goes to school

By Shraddha P | Project Coordinator

Residents, especially children, at the Sonari slum area of Jamshedpur are really busy today, for they have to make the community cultural program scheduled for the day a grand success. The busiest of the entire group is a frail young boy called Kalyan – as today’s event is the brain child of none other than him.

Today’s community cultural fest is, however, just one more example of how things are changing for the better in this locality, after Adarsh Seva Sansthan (ASES), a grass roots level non-profit supported by CRY – Child Rights and You, has started their intervention in the slum area lying next to the city airport. People familiar with the place can see the change in the way communities come together and take charge for themselves. But the story was not the same before this boy joined the local children’s group called the Bal Sansad.

Couple of years back, everyone in the community looked at Kalyan with sympathy. He was only 11 years and by that time he had to take responsibility of his family. He had an elder sister who also had to start working leaving her home, and Kalyan’s younger brother was really small. Though his parents were menial construction labourers, since they were chronic alcoholic, they hardly could keep anything for rearing the family. Following his sister’s suit, Kalyan started working at a nearby cycle repairing shop against a daily wage of Rs.20.

Just when Kalyan was almost accepting his fate, Ms. Prabha Jaiswal happened to meet him. Ms. Jaiswal represented ASES, a project working towards providing a fair, healthy world to the marginal and underprivileged children and to bring them to the mainstream of the society where they could have a happy-healthy childhood. He enquired about why Kalyan was working as a child labour. Kalyan said that he wanted to study like his friends but he had to prioritise his family. Mr. ACD even spoke to Kalyan’s employer. Like most of us, the shop owner was aware that employing a minor was sheer violation of child rights, but he believed that the job was essential for Kalyan’s survival.

The team of ASES took it upon themselves to make Kalyan’s dream come true. They counseled his parents but to their dismay, they found that his parents were intoxicated most of the times and they did not have any identity proofs which would connect them to various Govt. schemes and ease their lives.

Considering the situation, ASES took action at multiple levels. They started communicating with the local MLA and Hon’ble Minister of Food Supply in Jamshedpur and submitted their reports on identified vulnerable families. The MLA responded and assured to help with the documentations like Aadhar Card and Ration Card for these families immediately.

ASES also started liaisoning with Camp Schools run by Tata Steel and Tinplate Company in Jamshedpur for marginal children, including dropouts based on bridge courses. ASES registered Kalyan’s case in CHILDLINE too. He was then rescued with help of Govt Department under Operation Muskan- which is an initiative of the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) to rescue/rehabilitate children from their vulnerabilities.

Kalyan was finally enrolled in the camp school but his parents were not sure whether they wanted him to continue. After countless counseling sessions by ASES and continuous persuasion by Kalyan, his parents agreed to let him study. After the bridge course when he came back home, he was changed. He was confident, vocal and disciplined. He was then enrolled in a school of nearby locality and his performance improved day by day. Seeing his acumen and social skills he was soon chosen as the Bal Sansad. Now he takes active roles in counseling sessions, school management committee meetings etc. “I feel great when I see my friends value my opinion. I know what it is like to live a life without a dream. Hence, now that I am given a chance, I attend at school regularly and encourage them to come to school too.” As he speaks, there are more than 11 lakh working children in Jharkhand, as per census data 2011. If we dig deep, we will see that almost whopping 60% children, between 5 years to 14 years, are working while they are enrolled in school. This situation raises a pertinent question, if they are continuing to work isn’t that a violation of their basic right of ensuring happy childhoods? From another lens, in many a cases, these working children remain enrolled in school but in reality, work takes precedence over education. While Kalyan is definitely a success story that makes us smile but there are so many Kalyans looking for the silver lining at the end of the tunnel.

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Sep 18, 2018
Of Fathers, Daughters and Faith

By Pranay Jajodia | Project Coordinator

“You know what, I am pretty sure I should have scored more in History and Education. I missed the cut off required to move from Humanities to Nursing by a very thin margin. Of course, I’ve given my answer scripts for a recheck. But for now, I am concentrating on taking up English for my graduation and then doing my Masters in Social Work. My end objective remains the same. I want to help people. May be now, I will be able to help a larger number of people if I take up MSW.” History does repeat itself. Ananya, a lanky teenager from Dhenua – a small, unassuming little village in the Bardhaman district of West Bengal – recreated history twice when the Higher Secondary Examination results were announced last week.

How? First, she maintains her record of being the student with the highest marks in board examinations from her village – an 82% in Class 10 and now an 84.8% in Class 12. And second, she is still not satisfied with her marks.

The other thing that remains constant is Ananya’s source of inspiration and encouragement – her father. Pronab, secured a Bachelor’s Degree in Commerce from Kalna College and came back to his village to run the small shop owned by his family. Unfortunately, the business collapsed and he decided to take up farming in the 2 bighas of land he possessed. It wasn’t easy for this marginal farmer to take the decisions that he did. But he took them. He stood by all three of his daughters, warding off every marriage proposal that came their way – “The proposals never reached our house,” says Ananya. He took extra care of their studies with all the knowledge he had gathered from his student years and spent all his free time guiding them. He made sure that they never learn to use poverty as an excuse or an impediment to their course of advancement in life.

It is not an uncommon occurrence that children flourish when parents invest their faith in them and put them first. And for Ananya, it has just become the motto of her life to make her father proud of her. “When I was preparing for my Madhyamik (Class 10), I only wanted to score well. While preparing for my Uchcha Madhyamik (Class 12), I knew these scores would help set me on my course in life. And all I want to do is prove that my father did the right thing – by not succumbing to societal pressures and working extra hard to make sure we sisters faced no hurdles in our pursuit of education.”

Mr. Pronob is ecstatic. His focus also gets renewed with every test his girls pass with flying colours. “The college closest to our village is about 5km away. Ananya will have to cycle to the bus stand and then take a bus to and fro everyday to reach there. My wife’s paternal house is in Bardhaman and the college there is about the same distance from their house. I’ve been counseling her to pursue her studies from Bardhaman instead of here. She has merit and she deserves to go to a better college. I will see to it that she gets what she deserves in life. Now and forever,” he says.

We are proud of Ananya. But we’re even more proud of her father for being her guiding star.

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May 14, 2018
Sathya's Story of Hope

By Pranay Jajodia | Project Coordinator

In a small village in the Tirunelveli district of Tamil Nadu, women sit in the shade of their huts rolling beedis. Many of their young daughters also pitch in. The back breaking task of sitting for long hours and what the constant exposure to tobacco does to the body is scary to say the least. But for these girls….this is life. But shouldn’t young girls this age be in school at this time of the day you ask? But when a school is 10 kms away and there is no proper transportation, beedi making is the alternative thrust upon these children. This is the life that Sathya was born into.

The challenge:

In Sathya’s village, a girl completing her education was a thing of fantasies and the reasons were many:

Gender discrimination was not only practiced enthusiastically but was considered the norm, girls were at a disadvantage from birth itself.
The only available high school or secondary school was at least 10 kms away and the only means of secure transportation a government bus that had no fixed schedule. The only other alternative was a private bus service but of course parents wouldn’t even dream of spending extra money on transportation to let their daughters go to school!
The dropout rates were over 80% once primary school was complete. And this rate was even higher for girls.
Parents were also worried about their daughters’ safety once they hit adolescence and would rather keep them at home.
Once a girl dropped out of school, more often than not child marriage would inevitably follow.

Shattering the norms:

But it sometimes takes just that one small push to set in motion a chain reaction and Sathya and her parents turned out to be just that catalyst of change that the community needed.

Sathya was not willing to just accept what fate handed to her on a plate. She was willing to fight and she was willing to question.
Sathya’s parents as well – unlike other parents in the village had the courage to stand by and support their daughter.
They approached CRY supported project KALAM to try and see if they could find a solution to help continue their daughter’s education.

Strategy for resolution:

The project team decided to act fast!

As a first step, they helped connect Sathya to government schemes that provided transportation to girls who attended high school.
When Sathya managed to score an 83% in her final board exams – they also helped them make demands for subsidies and scholarships that would help the girl enroll in an engineering college.

The project workers were determined that Sathya would be the model and inspiration that the village needed to understand the possibilities open to a girl child. The day Sathya started her civil engineering exams was a triumph not only for the girl and her parents but for CRY as well.

With the help of our education campaign, Sathya and girls like her have a chance to chase their dreams by remaining in school. And YOU have made this possible.

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