Salaam Baalak Trust - working for street children

Introduction

Most of the children living and working on the streets are exposed to multiple forms of exploitation and abuses having detrimental impact on their physical and psychological development.[1]To enable these children lead a normal and healthy life, it is essential to help them overcome the pain and psychological trauma of living on the streets. This realisation in the early stages of evolution of SBT, motivated the founding members to use theatre and out station tours to form rapport with street children and help them catharsis to move on and start their lives afresh.[2]

In the year 2015-16,the girls from Arushi were taken to a trip to Manali, Himachal Pradesh. The five day trip (June 19-25) to the picturesque hill station was both a refreshing and enriching experience for girls. In the bounty of nature, not only the girls but staff members accompanying them forgot about their mundane routine life and rediscovered themselves. A total of 38 girls and five staff members went from Arushi.

Activities

The girls left Delhi around noon on June 19. The hours spent travelling were long but interesting with short tea, snacks and girls interacting and bonding with each other. The girls reached the hotel ‘Mountainvilla’ in Manali (Nehru Kund) at 8 a.m. on the morning of June 20. The girls settled down in the accommodation and to give an official start to the activities envisaged during the trip.

• Exploring Manali: The girls began the day in Manali with a walk in the army cantonment area and explored the local places in Manali around their hotel.
• Indoor Games: During the evening, the girls danced, played badminton, ludo and chatted their heart out forming new friendships and rekindling the new ones.
• Tourist Attractions: As part of the trip the girls visited the famous Jogni Falls. The water at Jogni was ice-cold and the girls splashed themselves wet. The only concern was that most of the girls had not brought an extra set of clothes with them and it was already raining, with there being a high possibility of the girls falling sick by the time they reached their hotel. So, they took take another break on the way and sipped some tea to keep themselves warm.

The girls also visited Solang Valley and enjoyed the indescribable beauty and lovely weather of the valley. Through cable car rides the girls were able to get a breath-taking top view of the valley. Some girls donned the ‘pahadi’ dresses and got their pictures clicked. Another worth-seeing spot visited by the girls was Roerich Art Museum and Gallery. The girls walked a distance of 3 km to see the gallery. They admired Mr. Roerich’s novel ideas and exquisite works of art. The girls also visited theHadimba and Vashishta Temple.

• Shopping: Each one of the girls was given Rs. 100 to spend at their leisure with each staff member having been put in charge of 9-10 girls for enable girls to shop. The girls headed off to the Mall Road, to shop and explore the place a little more.
• Educative Sessions with Girls: The staff also conducted educative sessions with the girls. The sessions centred on the historical importance of Himachal Pradesh and how tours and trips helped in fostering values of self-reliance and cooperating with others. A drawing competition was organised for the younger children.

Outcomes

The tour comprising an ideal mix of enriched learning and fun and frolic and paved the way for all-round development of children. The successful outcomes of the tour were:

• It improved and enhanced learning among students about the place visited, importance of conserving nature and world around them.
• Latent talent development and skill enhancement of children as children were provided with opportunities to showcase their drawing and painting skills and gained confidence to share their views in a group of people.
• Active participation in these visits further led to improvement in overall life pattern of children, through reduction of stress and negative emotions; using untapped mental and physical energy and strengthening the feelings of team building and team spirit among them.

• tour report with pictures (DOCX)

Introduction

SBT provides a continuum of care and protection services to children who once lived on streets. Children rescued from streets are exposed to physical and psychological violence, insanitary conditions and other bad influences. Many of these children fall prey to substance abuse and end up being addicted to drugs, viz., marijuana (gaanja), smoking, alcoholism and smelling spirit, flute or cough syrup. To be able to help these children lead a normal life one of the first step is to introduce them to a de-addiction programme. This helps in bringing their mind and body out of the influence of intoxicating agent and enable children to do a reality check. They become capable of understanding the harmful effects of substance abuse, reasons for quitting the substance use and get a brighter picture of future lying ahead.

Once the children normalise and are enrolled in residential centres and contact points they are introduced to a set pattern of life. One of the important component of this set pattern is to link them with mainstream education. Since, most of the rescued children are out-of-school with substantial educational gaps; bridging these gaps become imperative. Keeping these factors in mind, de-addiction of children addicted to drugs become a core and essential interventions at SBT. SBT consistently motivates and facilitates children access to de-addiction facilities.

Programme Activities and Progress Update

Continuing the activities of last quarter SBT laid a specific focus to reach out to children who had fallen prey to drug addiction in 2016.

• Identifying and motivating children: SBT team stepped up efforts to identify children living and working on the streets and who are vulnerable to drug addiction and substance abuse. Many of these children and adolescents who were consuming drugs were wasted and remained intoxicated. The staff members faced a lot of difficulty in motivating and counselling these children. The team members initiated the process of seeking agreement by convincing the family members including parents of these children. For those who were on their own, the staff convinced them whenever they were in these senses.To convince the children and their parents, staff members made recurrent visits to explain the ill-effects of drugs on health motivatedthem to join the drug de-addiction programme. Post, the informed consent children were motivated in a friendly and humane manner about the benefits of quitting drugs and leading a normal and healthy life.
• Enrolling children for de-addiction programme: SBT in association with Muskan Foundation enrolled the children for the programme, which involved staying at the de-addiction facility for a period of six months. Along with the de-addiction treatment, children were provided hygiene material, clothes during their stay and food and nutrition. Most of the children came out of the programme clean and de-addicted.
• Follow-up and re-lapse: The team regularly remains in touch with the de-addicted children to avoid cases of relapse. Although a few children who again fell prey to substance abuse were motivated to go for a second in line de-addiction programme. The success rate of the second line programme is very high.

During the Financial Year 2015 to 2016, 49 children from SBT were referred to Muskan foundation for de-addiction and 11 adults were providedde-addiction services through to AIIMS de-addiction centre, Ghaziabad.Since, February-May 2016 a total of 9 children and adolescents have been successfully de-addictedunder the programme. SBT team is regularly following up with these children to minimise relapse.

The break-up of children residential-centre wise is as follows.

Details of Children Enrolled under De-addiction Programme (March 2016 to May 2016 )

Referred to De-addiction

ODRS Open Shelter     6 boys

GRP                            2 boys

Kishalaya                     1 boy

Total                             9 boys

Challenges

SBT has faced a lot of problems in the last quarter to convince children to opt for drug de-addiction. These involved convincing children and their families to opt for drug de-addiction course. Children were not ready to give up the known devil, despite multiple visits and one to one interaction. Consequently, the turn out in the last quarter was low.

Future Plan

Drawing lessons from the last quarter,the SBT team plans to intensify its efforts to create awareness about harmful effects of drug abuse among vulnerable children and prevent substance abuse among them. The team will make efforts to increase one to one interaction and counsel children who are abusing drugs to opt for de-addiction course and once they come out clean the staff would engage them to educational and vocational training activities of the SBT to prevent re-lapse.

For DETAILS pls see attachment

Introduction

Street children are deprived of protective environment of family. Article 20 of United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child recognizes the right of such children who cannot be looked after by their own family to special care. The Government of India also accorded serious attention to provide protective environment of children in need of care including street children through enactment of the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2000 and subsequent amendments to the Act. The Act in its Section 37 provides for establishment of shelter homes for children in need of care and protection.  Significance of shelter homes and residential centres for street children is immense, given the exploitative, violent and hostile situations they face in cities. Shelter homes or residential centres act as safety nets protecting street children from sexual abuse and exploitation, physical violence and child labour.

SBT Residential Centres are Unique

Unlike orphanages, shelter homes and other child care institutions, full-care and short stay residential homes provide an enabling environment to children to realize their potential to the fullest. An attempt is made to educate and help children develop intellectually at these centres. However, children who are not inclined towards academics are not pushed towards a definite career path. Children are provided opportunities to develop their hidden talents and skills. They are encouraged to pursue dance, puppetry, acting, painting and photography as well.

Activitiesand Progress Update

Understanding the importance of ensuring a safe environment for children, SBT runs full-care residential homes for girls and boys who live on streets. Aasra, ApnaGhar, Old Delhi Railway Station Open Centre (ODRS OC) DMRC Children Home are home for boys; Udaan Home and Arushi are shelter homes for girls. Besides serving the prime purpose of providing a ‘safe living space’ to children, residential homes offer a comprehensive package of services including food, education, medical care, mental health and psychological support. Children’s admission in the centres is ascertained after they are duly presented in CWCs as per the provisions of the JJ Act, 2000. Identifying the unique background and needs of the child, individual care plans are drawn for each child in these centres. Regular academic, psychological and medical assessments of the children are done to provide individualised education and health facilities. Full-time mental health professional and medical coordinator are appointed in the centre to provide psychological support, counselling and facilitate medical check-ups and treatment of children, respectively.  The continuum of care and protection services provided at the residential centres have been depicted in the Figure below.

 Future Plan

SBT team plans to improve the existing quality of services through increased networks, better opportunities and staff capacity building. The team is making concerted efforts to reach more number of children in the coming year.

Links:

• http://www.salaambaalaktrust.com

Introduction

Salaam Baalak Trust endeavours to provide a comprehensive package of services to children rescued from the streets viz, education, skill building, health and nutrition, latent talent development and exposure visits. An important component of SBT’s work remains education and skill building of children. While SBT’s comprehensive education programme is both flexible and pliable to take into account the varied of demands of working and street children. Many of these children have learning gaps and find it difficult to keep pace with the school curricular demands, in such a scenario the children are provided formal and non-formal education through participatory and play way methods. Similarly the children at SBT are also given adequate exposure to use technology in their studies, school and home assignments and know about the world around them. For this purpose SBT has been striving to establish fully functional computer labs in all its residential centres.

With the support of Ciena CSR division this year, SBT has successfully established a fully functional computer lab at Arushi Girls Residential Centre located in Gurgaon. The centre has a total capacity of 60 girls. Presently, the girls in the age group of 5-18 years stay at the centre. It is heartening to see that both young and older children are using computer lab with a keen interest. The following section details out the specific activities being conducted at the computer lab of Arushi.

Activities

The setting up of computer lab has brought in a new zeal among girls to use various MS office package tools as also the internet to see educational videos and learn about the world around. Some of the elder girls also use internet to connect with their friends in other residential centres of SBT online.

Some specific steps taken to ensure meaningful use of computer lab includes:

• Adequate technological infrastructure: The staff and children have fully functional computer labs with five functional computers which are not only maintained by staff but children also use them with caution.
• Set time table:  A time table has been framed to optimise the use of computer lab by the girls. The non-school going girls use the lab from 11 AM to 1 PM and school going girls use the lab from 3 PM to 5 PM.
• Educational support: The computers are acting as a boon to children and their studies. Many school going children watch educational videos, prepare their school assignments with the help of information gathered through internet and the teachers at the centre try to establish the link between real and virtual information. Children have reported that internet has specifically been useful for them in understanding various concepts of science such as solar systems, laws of physics and daily life examples of chemical reactions. The younger children like to paint and learn in a play way method about colours and shapes. Those girls who are on the verge of completing their higher studies search about the various institutions offering courses of their choice online.
• Entertainment and communication: The children especially younger children like to watch rhymes and other e-stories on the computers while the older children are learning the use of GMAIL, Facebook and other networking sites. The staff also explains them both the virtues and vices of internet and how the children should not be addicted to it and follow safe cyber practices.
• Specialised computer training: On weekends a volunteer comes to teach children the use of computers including MS word, power point and excel. The classes have shown visible results in terms of increasing children’s technological capacities.
• Monitoring and supervision: The staff realises the importance of adopting safe cyber surfing practice and they supervise and monitor the use of computer, sites surfed and web content viewed by children.

Impact and Benefits

The access of computers on a regular basis has had two-fold benefits for the girls, first access of information and second building computer skills. Many girls have reported that they feel more confident in use of computers and they describe computer use as a specific and useful skill which would help them in their studies as well as their professional lives. The younger children also look forward to computer classes and enjoy them thoroughly. Further, the staff members have shared that young children not only get a chance of expressing their creative side on to the computer system but they seem to constructively use the enormous amount of energy they have by sitting together in groups and learning with each other. Another benefit of computer classes has been inculcation a sense of discipline among children wherein they adhere to rules of the class sit quietly, handle computer and other equipment with caution and use computer as per the fixed time slots.

This year an annual tour presentation was prepared by girls from Arushi where they employed their skills of making a power point presentation (ppt). (The snap shots of the ppt are attached below)

 Future Plan

In future the SBT Arushi team plans to continue computer classes and design specific content and plan for these classes wherein the teachers at the centre would be able to teach children relevant topics from their formal education curriculum and non-formal education modules through use of educational videos, power points and web content. This would make teaching and learning more interesting and effective.