 A BRIDGE TO THE UNREACHED

Child labour continues to be a major player in depriving the children access to elementary education. The M.Venkatarangaiya Foundation (MVF) has been working in Shankarpally Mandal, Andhra Pradesh, on the issue of elimination of child labour and Universalisation of Elementary Education.

Every year, the Organisation has been conducting mobilisation camps for bonded labour children in order to withdraw them from work and admit them to appropriate levels in the schools.

The initial thrust of the programme run by MVF was almost entirely on abolition of child labour. The focus then shifted to an extent towards education, essentially because of the close link between child labour and elementary education. It was found that it was not possible to tackle one problem without dealing with the other.

MVF does not accept the widely held premise that children in poorer families go to work essentially to provide sustenance to the family. The MU experience showed that there is very little truth in this premise. With a little motivation, even the children engaged in the most exploitative form of work, viz as bonded labourers, can be withdrawn from work and admitted to schools. This is what MVF has been demonstrating through its annual camps.

Another conclusion which MVF has arrived at through its experience is that children in the older age group will almost invariably drop out unless they are admitted to the class corresponding to their age. Any attempt to make a child who is ten years old attend Class I is doomed to fail. In fact, the correct procedure would be to assist the child adequately so that he or she can be admitted in Class III or IV. The MVF has attempted to impart precisely such training. Not surprisingly, it was found that most of the working children have the ability to grasp the lessons much quicker and hence within a period of three to four months manage to learn what in the normal course would have taken three years of formal schooling. In this, the camp approach of MVF has been particularly successful. Apart from keeping the children away from work for a period of two to three months, establishing thereby that the family is not really dependent on their income, the camps provide an atmosphere where a child can pick up rapidly and ultimately be admitted to a class corresponding to his or her age.

The experience of MVF shows that the problem of enrolment has to be dealt with differently in different age groups.

* Children in the age group of 5-8 should be encouraged to attend school (parents must be motivated);

* Children in the age group of 9-11 should be drawn away from work through a system of summer ori-

Action Plan of MVF

Objectives

ELIMINATION OF Child Labour in Chevella Mandal

UNIVERSALISATION OF Elementary Education in Chevella Mandal.

Components

SURVEY OF school going and non-school going children in Chevella Mandal.

SURVEY OF the number of child workers.

CAMPAIGN To build an effective group of youth activists who would then perform the task of education activists.

COMPULSORY ENROLMENT of children in the age group of 5-8 years into local schools.

WITHDRAWAL OF child labour from work in the age group of 9-14 years and mainstreaming them.

TRAINING OF the youth activists for survey and for campaigning against the child labour for an effective ongoing programme.

entation camps and then admitting them to schools preferably through welfare hostels; and Children in the age group 12-14 should be specially trained on a continuous basis so that they can attend the Class VII board exam as private candidates.

Girl children represent a completely separate category. Parents are less inclined to accept the fact that education could be just as useful for their daughters as for their sons. Apart from this, the girl child's adulthood is atleast 3-4 years ahead of that of the boys'. The flexibility of life style and mobility available to most boys is not available to girls. The nature of their work like baby sitting, collecting water, housekeeping and so on, also tends to keep them more attached to the house than boys. To this extent, therefore, MVF has found it more difficult to utilise residential schools and camps to the advantage of girl children.

The MVF has in the past successfully conducted a series of short term motivational camps, mainly for girls, in order to motivate them to join schools directly, especially in respect of girls in the lower age group. The camps have also served to identify those girls who could be inducted to government residential schools and hostels through the longer duration summer orientation camps. Once these two categories are separated out, the rest would have to be dealt with through NFE centres. On the whole, it has been the endeavor of the MVF to formulate schemes where wage earning working girl children are drafted to formal schools either directly or through summer camps and to utilise Non-Formal Educational centres for non-wage earning working girls.

Recently, the M. Venkatarangaiya Foundation has taken up one more area, the Chevalla Mandal, to replicate the activities of Shankarpally Mandal.

The task of withdrawing children from work and their subsequent enrolment into formal schools was implemented with the active involvement of the youth clubs and the youth associations already in operation in Chevalla Mandal, the gram panchayats and the elected representatives to the local bodies, and the parent-teacher's asso- ciation attached to every village level government schools. Reaching out to the parents, children and employers through the local and already existing institutions was seen as a viable method to create a sustainable programme.

During the first phase of the programme after an initial mapping of the entire area, three villages were taken up. Grampanchayats and volunteers took up the tasks of conducting the survey in the villages, enrolling all children in the 5-8 years age group, raising con- tributions to employ an additional teacher in the government school and setting up non-formal education centres to establish contact with the non-school going children in the 9-14 years age group.

The children who have been withdrawn from work and are now in schools have come together to campaign against child labour in the area. A street play is being put up by them. They have so far covered twenty villages. The immediate impact of the campaign has been the stepping up of enrolment of children in the village schools and also the abandoning of work by children engaged as bonded labourers and their joining the Bridge Course.