Help 750 child labourers go to school, not work

18 children have a chance to complete their education and build a better future for themselves.

YOU have made this possible and helped change their stories.

 Meet Naveen Kumar (name changed) One time child labourer. Future engineer. National award recipient.

Life had always been hard for Naveen and his family. His father had been a small time vegetable vendor without the means to expand his business and the boy had to drop out of school in the 4^th grade to work at a road side tea stall and contribute to the meager family income.

The challenge:

When CRY’s on ground project team got in touch with him and tried to mainstream him back into education – they were met with fierce resistance. And the reasons were very simple.

1. In the small village of Madanpalli, Andhra Pradesh where Naveen lived many children did not go to school and worked for their families and Naveen’s parents did not understand why their son would also not do the same. 
2. Not having to spend any money for his education or the promise of a mid day meal for their son, were not incentive enough to get them to relent.
3. They knew child labour was punishable by law but without the income the Naveen was bringing in the family’s survival was at stake.

Strategy for Resolution:

CRY’s strength has always been in looking at the issue of child rights in a holistic manner and therefore faced with this resistance - the project team began to delve deeper into the problem and see if the root cause could be identified and tackled.

• Through conversations with Naveen’s family the team realized that his father had applied for a loan that would help him expand and strengthen his business of selling vegetables. If the loan could come through then he would be able to earn enough to sustain his family’s needs. However the loan hadn’t come through yet.

o   The team immediately began conversations with the local governance to understand where the loan was stuck. Though it took some weeks – they were ultimately able to figure out the hurdles and process the loan. However, they had just one request – the loan would be released only if Naveen’s father agreed to send the boy back to school.

o   The team also in the meantime helped the family get ration cards and adhar cards so that they could access government schemes like the PDS to help ease the financial burden to a certain extent.

Success!

Finally Naveen’s father relented and the boy was enrolled into school in an age appropriate class. However, the CRY team did not stop there!

• They connected Naveen to the local children’s group so that his peers could keep him motivated and help him adjust to being back in school.
• Seeing his interest and aptitude in science they enrolled him into a district level science competition. And this changed things for Naveen completely.

Searching for inspiration to create something for this program – Naveen noticed that there was a lot of pollution in his school from cooking fires when the mid day meals were prepared. This pollution could be seen across his village as well. The boy set his mind to finding a solution and soon developed an eco friendly way of cooking food using natural materials.

His invention was one of the 70 chosen from a pool of 450 inventions to be showcased at the state level and from there Naveen was chosen to participate in the same competition at the national level. The ultimate success came to him when he was one of the five chosen for the national prize!

While anyone would be excited about getting national recognition, for this boy who had no future to speak of – this award meant something much bigger.

Naveen’s invention today, is not only being used in schools across his state but the recognition has brought in a tidal wave of change in his community. As Naveen sets his sights higher and dreams of becoming an engineer, he has become the inspiration for many children who now believe nothing is impossible.

These are the kind of stories that your contribution can help enable.

Some of the work that YOUR support has enabled for education across India:

• Schools are activated and run smoothly – one of main reasons why children drop out of school is because schools are often not within easy access. And also because they don’t function as per norms.
• Children are motivated to continue to come to school – Often children in our intervention areas are first time learners and do not receive encouragement and motivation from their families to come to school.
• A school has proper infrastructure – absence of basic things like safe water, proper toilets, black boards, books, playgrounds and even adequate teachers often act as a deterrent for children to continue their education
• Children do not have to work – Child labour and migrating with parents to find employment, are few of the main reasons why children drop out of school
• Children do not suffer from gender discrimination and child marriage – Marrying off children, especially girls at an young age – is still the norm in many communities
• Communities, families and children are sensitized on the necessity of education – Often children lose touch with education simply because of lack of awareness.

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