Educate Children Living on Construction Sites

Dear Supporters,

Thank you for your wonderful support to our organisation during the last quarter of this year.

We would like to share a story of one of our Alumni who has overcome challenges and extreme adversities common in the lives of migrant labourers, to forge a stable and successful future for himself. He is an inspiring example of working towards a fulfilling life amidst hardship and deprivation.

Against the Odds!

The cement and dust in the air quickly formed a thick layer of grime on the pages within minutes after Suraj opened his book to read. Every day, cement obscured the text making it difficult for him to read the words behind the grainy, grey layers of dust; but all this did not faze Suraj's desire to read. At 29, Suraj is a perfect example of hard work, persuasion and strong will. He completed a Master’s in Business Administration (MBA) with specialisation in Human Resource and is currently working in a well-known non-profit organisation. Suraj might have followed the footsteps of his father and become a semi-skilled construction worker but he had other dreams. He is now an inspiration to children and youth from his own community.

 Suraj migrated from the Yavatmal district of Maharashtra to Mumbai at the age of 10 along with his family. Suraj’s father found work as a daily wage labourer at a construction site where Mumbai Mobile Creches also happened to be running a day care centre for the children of labourers. Eventually, Suraj’s mother also began working on the same construction site, to add to the family’s income.

 Suraj was studying at a school in his native village but after coming to Mumbai there was a gap of a year in his schooling. Suraj was enrolled into MMC’s centre on the site and the teachers in the centre helped him enrol back in a local municipal school. Suraj proudly shares that “Along with good food, we used to get education. I learned the habit of doing things on time at MMC. It helped in my studies also. (After coming to MMC), I have taken education seriously.”

 The noisy and dangerous environment of a construction site, the family’s poor financial condition and the sudden death of his father didn’t stop Suraj from pursuing education. At one point, he had to stop his college due a major road accident, but he did not run away from the situation. He continued to study and completed his graduation.

 With determination and grit, Suraj has found a way out of these difficulties. He continues his association with us; He is a part of the Alumni group and also helps us to work in the community.

 *Name changed to protect identity

In addition to running a comprehensive day-care centre for children, MMC hosts monthly meetings with parents that focus on different important topics ranging from finance management to hygiene and nutrition. MMC recognises that parents play a pivotal role in the growth and development of children and identifies the community as the central focus for creating awareness and sustainable interventions. The meetings, held over a cup of tea (Chai), provide parents and community members with a platform for open and informal discussions. A specialized MMC Program Officer leads the meetings and facilitates open discussion. 

We would like to highlight the efforts and innovative measures taken by our team especially at one of centre Airoli, in Navi Mumbai to increase participation of parents in these meetings.

As parents at the site work during the hours that the centre operates, the centre staffs was finding it very difficult to get parents to attend the meetings. The Parental meetings (chai paani meeting) numbers were extremely low due to the short period of lunch breaks and no leave from the construction site to attend meetings.

To improve the numbers, the centre staff decided to meet the safety officer onsite and made two requests

1. To give an extended lunch break on the scheduled meeting date
2. To allow the Program Officer to hold a separate chai paani meeting for men as they have an equally responsible role in child development and towards the community

The safety officer agreed to our requests and also ensured that he was present for all meetings from the month of February.  After gaining support from the site safety officer there has been immense improvement in the number of parents attending the meeting. Only 66 community members attended the meeting in January whereas after continuous dialogue and sustained efforts with builder 104 community members attended the meeting in February. The centre staff was nervous as they were holding the first “males only” meeting. The responses were overwhelming and 47 male community members attended the meeting. The centre reached 104 community members in total in the month of February.

Similarly in the month of March, 43 male community members attended the community meeting with a total reach of 93 parents.

Due to the cooperation and positive response from both male community members and site office, now we are hoping to pilot only male chai paani meetings across other centers.

Here are few achievements with respect to outreach activities with parents in the last three months (January –March 2019)

• No of meetings held with parents across our centres: 63
• Average no of parents reached every month: 492
• Varied topics covered in these meetings: Maternal Nutrition,    Importance of Birth Registration, Information on disease -Tuberculosis