EDUCATION AND THE ROLE OF NGOs
Shantha Sinha
There are 100 million children in the country who do not go to schools. They are excluded from the options that come along with formal education. In other words, not having access to regular schools, children are forced to join the ranks of the labour force as unskilled workers mostly in the unorganized sector.
The consequence is marginalisation of these vulnerable groups who are deprived of all choices.
It is unfortunate that there is still a debate among educationists, policy makers and the NGOs on the need for the children of the poor to be sent to schools. At one end of the spectrum, there are efforts to give the children an option for going to night schools while they work during the day, and at the other, to provide for alternative education for a minuscule population of children. It is essential to arrive at a consensus on the issue of schooling for all children.
For those children who have not visualised going to school as being within their reach, the very act of going to school is an achievement. It is also an unfolding of a process resulting in changes in the parents' attitude towards the child, and the development of a child's own personality. Thus, for the parent, the child is no longer a labourer who is to be abused and burdened with adult responsibilities and tasks, but to be sent to school. And the schoolgoing child is nurtured and indulged. For the children, they no longer need to work and enhance the assets and incomes for either the family or for others. Instead they are in the process of equipping themselves.
This process also signifies a break with the past and with the tradition of illiteracy. It announces the stepping into a new world This qualitative change cannot be undermined.
At the same time, one must recognise that there are problems in children gaining access to regular schools. The atmosphere at home is not conducive. The school is not ready to welcome children. The education content is uninteresting. The teacher is indifferent. Every step is a struggle for the child against many odds.
Most of the schools, strictly speaking, cannot cater to all the illiterate children in their area of operation without at least additional staff, if not additional accommodation. In a sense, this situation exposes the basic limitations of the government programme for Universalisation of Elementary Education. Because, as of date, adequate infrastructure just does not exist and even if all the children are motivated to attend school, they cannot be enrolled. However, the solution to this problem of large numbers lies not in duplicating the government infrastructure but rather in extending the government institutions and manpower.
The NGOs have a crucial role to play in bridging all these gaps.
To do this:
1. NGOs need to build up pressure for effective functioning of schools, in lobbying for provision of more schools.
2. NGOs must articulate the latent demand of the parents for providing education of the children. The need is to strengthen the existing infrastructural institutions that are available.
3. The resources and experiences of NGOs who have attempted to design better schools and curriculum must be utilised to strengthen regular schools.
4. The NGOs must force the government to deliver its responsibilities towards the children's education. NGOs should not try to create parallel structures with their limited resources.
5. NGOs must press for the presence of all children in schools.
6. NGOs must press for the law on free and compulsory elementary education.
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[glossy brochure from MV Foundation]
Reaching the Unreached
Times have changed for ten-year-old Ramulu. His daily routine now revolves around his school. No longer does he have to work for hours each day in someone else's field to pay off a debt. Yet, less than a year ago, Ramulu had been pledged to work as a bonded labourer for a paltry Rs. 1500. That was before he joined the M.V.F. program.
Like Ramulu, more than 15,000 children in 300 villages of Rangareddy district of Andhra Pradesh have benefited from the M.V.F. program of withdrawing children from work and enrolling them into school. Relying mainly on community initiatives, the M.V.F. program aims at motivating parents and children to utilise the formal school as a medium for child's advancement. Based on the belief that every child out of school is a working child, the program does not make any distinction between one form of child labour and another. Its one point agenda is to ensure no child goes to work and all go to school.
The strategy adopted is essentially based on age group and gender. Older children in the age group 9-14 years are run through a bridge course which utilises what they already know to enable them to catch up with regular school children of their own age. For younger children, direct admission to schools is undertaken. In all cases, there is a detailed follow-up program which ensures minimal drop-out. For the girl child the approach, though broadly similar, is more intensive.
Over the years the program, which has at different times been supported by the Government of India, CRY, IPEC-ILO, UNICEF, HIVOS, UNDP among others, has involved more and more sections of the local community. Today it encompasses, apart from parents and children themselves, elected representatives, employers and government school teachers. As the programme has expanded to cover 300 villages, the role of M.V.F. has changed from an initiator to a facilitator.
In implementing the program, M.V.F. has shattered several myths... 1) Economic compulsions prevent parents from withdrawing a child from work. 2) Parents do not feel school education is essential for the child. 3) Children prefer working to going to school. In contrast, the program has demonstrated how parents, irrespective of their economic status, have a great desire to educate their children. It has also shown how parents, once they are assured that their child will be looked after at school, make tremendous sacrifices in terms of time and money to ensure that the child stays in school.
There have been other spin-offs. The attitude of the entire village community towards the children has changed. There is greater pride in them and a greater sense of responsibility towards children-related issues. Sensitive issues such as the age of marriage for girls have come under scrutiny with a number of girls insisting on remaining in schools. In agriculture, for the employers, it has meant a change in cropping patterns and, to the adult labourer, greater bargaining power.
Above all, the program has shown how intense the desire is among parents and children for a better future for themselves and how they cannot be treated as helpless bystanders with neither the will nor capacity to influence their destiny.
MV Foundation - Achievements at a Glance
Year 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996
No. of villages 3 15 42 55 198 300
No.of children enrolled into school 68 313 1720 2750 4330 5815
(5-8 years)
No. of children enrolled thru' camps 16 70 223 972 1236 1786
(bridge course)
No. of adolescent girls 16 30 112 123 382 734
No. of bonded labour children - 10 30 289 320 582
No. of para-teachers in govt. schools
(a) Apptd. by M.V.F. - 5 25 68 175 545
(b) Apptd. by Parent Teacher Assoc. - 2 25 49 75 500
& gram panchayat
There are today over 200,000 children in Ranga Reddy District yet to be withdrawn from work. Much still needs to be done. Hence we are seeking contributions to the corpus fund.
Contributions made are exempt from tax under Section 80(C) of the Income Tax Act. The Foundation has permission to receive donations from abroad under the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act.
M.Venkatarangaiya Foundation 28 Road No.1 Marredpally West Secunderabad 500026 Andhra Pradesh India Tel: 091 40 7801320 Fax: 09140 812091
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Friday January 26, 1996
[I can't tell the newspaper - perhaps, Indian Express]
MV Foundation Brings Them Back to School
by G. Ravi Kiran
HYDERABAD, Jan. 25: If any organisation can claim to have successfully curbed child labour and rehabilitated school dropouts, the Mamidipudi Venkatarangaiya Foundation has come a long way. Using a novel method, it aims at elimination of child labour through universalization of education.
Starting its work in a cluster of villages in Ranga Reddy district. it succeeded in bringing about a change in the mindset of the people, who agreed not to deprive their children of primary educaion. A lot of prodding had to be done for bringing the children back to school.
Concentrating its work in backward areas, the Foundation targeted the vulnerable sections for driving home the message of the child's right to formal schooling.
"The root cause of child labour is not just poverty but parental apathy towards education. This is playing a greater role in weaning away children from school. Unless the rural poor are made to believe in the existing education system, the situation will not improve in the near future," says Mr R. Venkat Reddy, coordinator at the Foundation.
RURAL AREAS: Any child out of school, whether engaged in wage work or not, is to be considered a child labourer because in some form or the other he would be subjected to work, at home or outside. This has been the Foundation's experience in tackling the menace in rural areas.
"Initiallv, we faced some problems with landlords refusing to part with cheap labour and parents unwilling to lose supplementary income brought by their children. But the response was immense once they were convinced of the bright future awaiting their children," he said.
The main thrust is on encouraging children in the 9-14 year age group through non-formal education centres. short-duration residential camps, child to child campaigns and public meetings. The dropout rate is high in this age group.
The idea of conducting night schools in such unavoidable cases amounted to legitimising child labour. The M.V. Foundation which believed in complete schooling for the child was against any such programme. There was the painful process of acclimatising the children to the atmosphere they had abandoned. Residential camps were established where care was taken to sustain the interest of children.
As part of its programme, the Foundation is currently conducting a ''Shramika Balala Vidya Vikasa Sibiram" at Gandipet. The 113 pupils, divided into six groups, are being prepared for the seventh class public examinations. Their education and health needs are being looked after by eight instructors.
Forty other children are being coached for fifth standard examinations. After successful completion of their courses here. the students will be enrolled in regular schools with accommodation in social welfare hostels.
The camp in-charge B. Ramachandra was of the view that it was easy dealing with the students as they were inclined to work hard.
''It is how much students learn that counts, not how much we teach.'' he said. For the inmates at the camp, it is not studies alone but also sharing of responsibilities such as cleaning and serving. For some, taking part in the camp was not all that difficult as they found parental support in this venture.
But for Bhimaiah from Kotapalli village under the Shankarapalli mandal, it was different as he had to defy his parents and follow a friend to the Gandipet camp. The innocent boy, after years of labour, escaped from the hold of his father who was trying to renew a contract binding his son's services for three years.
EXPERIMENT: The cxperiment which began with 16 girl students in the Shankarapalli mandal in Ranga Reddy district in 1991 has now been expanded to benefit as many as 4.800 children in 37 villages.
In the Chevella mandal, local youth organizations along with gram panchayats and parent organisations played an active role in support of the cause.
Under the universalisation of elementary education programme in 16 rural mandals comprising nearly 800 villages, the MV Foundation trained 1,200 volunteers and 60 full-time workers. The Foundation's services were utilised in implementaion of government programmes such as Bala Jyoti and National Child Labour Eradication Project.
From bridge courses, district resource centres to 3-day camps, various programmes are being conducted to motivate child labourers. And the Foundation has achieved 90 percent success.
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THE HINDU, Tuesday, April 25,1995
Restoring dropouts ONE is already aware of the low literacy level and high rate of drop-outs in schools especially in the rural areas. It is also accepted that because of rural poverty children are needed to work and augment the family's earnings. In addition, today's education does not guarantee jobs to the rural poor. So sure are we that the root causes of rural illiteracy are rural poverty, unwillingness of rural parents and futility of today's education, that we never spare a moment to question or re-examine their validity. What is worse is that because of the assertion of these causes by one and all even the parents of rural children have begun to accept them as true.
But thanks to the work of M. Venkatarangaiya Foundation in Shankarpalli Mandal of Andhra Pradesh, increasing numbers of child-labour of the area are being withdrawn from work and sent to schools, all through means of education. Besides, a study conducted by them explicitly showed that every illiterate parent is aware that access to self respect, dignity and entry to mainstream society is only through literacy and education thereby proving the fallacy of the assertions of the root causes of rural illiteracy. But how is this brought about by the Foundation which is a modest non-government organisation?
At the outset MVF considers all children in the age group of 5-14 who are out-of-schools as child-labourers. Thus for MVF, child-labourers are those who are engaged in hazardous as well as non-hazardous works: who are employed on wages and who work without getting paid; who are employed by others and who work at home or who contribute to family enterprise or cultivatlon; who work as apprentices acquiring skills and receiving on-job training with artisan parents and even those who don't do any work and are just idle.
The MVI adopts a two pronged strategy to remove child-labourers from work. For the 5-8 year olds, the MVF strategy is to get them enrolled in the local government schools. The 9-14 year olds are first identified through non-formal education centres. Contacts are established with their parents and after intensive motivation-drive, these children are withdrawn from their respective works and trained for three to four months in a residential educational orientation camp. By the end of this residential camp, the hitherto totally illiterate children acquire the ability to read and write and can now join into classes III or IV of formal schools and get admitted into social welfare hostels.
An important and compulsory element at every stage of various activities is the involvement of the community. For instance, in villages where residential educational orientation camps, normally with 200-250 children, are held, the village panchayat's cooperation is ensured. The cooperation is essential also because the staying of 200-250 children for about three to four months in the camps means a pressure on the village especially for water, electricity and latrine-space. Such cooperation also hastens the gradual change in the mindset of the dominant castes of the villages who finally begin to accept the children even when a majority of them generally belong to the scheduled castes. The youth, mainly from the scheduled castes, are found to be the prime motivators. Themselves being the first generatlon of educated, the youth are aware of the drawbacks of being a child-labourer. They also realise the importance of schooling to a rural child. Incidentally, some of the youth who had discontinued their own studies were inspired to take them up again.
In every village the MVF takes care to set up a Parent-Teacher Association (P.T.A). The PTAs, by providing additional teachers or rooms, strengthen the local government schools, help raise funds and serve as a forum to represent connected issues to authorities concerned. The formation of PTAs and the involvement of the village communities, especially the youth, has helped improve quality of schools. Teachers have become more regular and more serious about their teaching.
In 1992, out of 10,661 children in Shankarpalli Mandal 5,500 children did not go to any school. With MVF's efforts and intervention, by 1994, 4,190 of the non-school going children began to attend schools. Thus in Shankarpalli Mandal, 70 per cent of the non-school-going children in the age group of five to eight years and 50 per cent in the age group of nine to fourteen years are now put in schools. But such removal of child-labourers from work and putting them into schools is not devoid of consequences. M.V. Foundation has attempted to understand the impact, say, on family where the members have to make adjustment to share the burden of the work, adjust for the reduced income and also experience change of attitude towards the child; or on the landlord-labour relationship and the change of attitude of employers towards children after they are removed from work. The difficulties encountered in the process of withdrawing children from work are far too many and the question of child labour has also a vital political dimension which needs to be handled with resolution.
MVF knows that there are still many more child-labourers in Shankarpalli to be set free from bonds of working. Especially the hard core child labour in the age group of 12-14 years employed as farm hands or engaged to graze cattle and goats and the 9-14-year-old girls who do domestic chores and also work as agricultural labourers. While this is the laudable saga at Shankarpalli Mandal, the child labourers of other Mandals are still walting for someone like the M. Venkatarangaiya Foundation. The sooner they get, the better it would be. For them as well as for the society.
Anil Ekbote
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DECCAN HERALD Sunday April 16, 1995
A charitable foundation in Hyderabad has been attempting to formally educate child labourers, says KATHYAYINI CHANIARAJ.
SHASHIKALA was one year old when her father died. Her sister was then pressurised by relatives to skip school and take up a job so that they would not have to look after the family. Soon, Shashikala too began work in a biscuit factory in the Kattedan Industrial Area outside Hyderabad when others her age were starting school.
She earned Rs 15-20 per day depending upon how fast she smeared the cream on the biscuits. The thought of being in a cream biscuit factory may be exciting to some kids but Shashikala has had enough. She can't bear the smell of biscuits any more.
But now, Shashikala and many others like her are preparing for their Standard VII examination at a residential school for girl dropouts run by the M. Venkatarangaiya Foundation (MVF) of Hyderabad. Lalitha, who had earlier tended buffaloes and worked as a wage labourer, looks cheerful now in her bright flowery long skirt.
Mamta, a motherless 12-year old, had to quit when her stepmother asked her to fend for herself. "Working at the factory was much harder than studying," she says. "I fought with my mother and came here," says Aruna, her teeth and eyes gleaming in her dusky face. "I want to study'higher and higher' as long as there is something more to be studied."
Aruna would like to become a teacher, like her current one, teaching under-privileged dropouts. All of them are definite about never wanting to work in a factory again. A hundred tired questions rush invariably to mind at the thought of making poor children go to school. How will the family survive? Who will compensate the parents for the loss of the child's wages? Who will look after the child's younger siblings, fetch fuel & fodder?
MVF has, however, taken the "fundamentalist" and uncompromising stand that "no child should work, face drudgery and lose its childhood" and that any child not attending school is a child labourer. Contrary to those who believe that child labour is a "harsh reality" and only "exploitative" child labour is bad.
The Foundation claims to have shifted child labourers from work to formal schools-2.060 children [illegible text] who were out of school in the age group of 5-14 years in Shankarapalli Mandal of Ranga Reddy district in Andhra Pradesh, from April to December 1993.
In 1987, 50 child bonded labourers were enrolled in a residential camp mainly to keep them away from their employers. After three months of training, the kids were ready to join formal schools. A strategy that was adopted to eliminate child labour in Shankarapalli Mandal.
In the eight years since then, these camps have become annual features. Additionally, campaigns to motivate parents and children and follow-up measures to prevent drop-outs have also become part of the programme.
Initial surveys revealed that most children were engaged in rural areas in domestic or agricultural work of non-hazardous nature. The more visible being exploitative, hazardous work in urban areas. This is often lost sight of, even by NGOs, says Mrs Shantha Sinha of MVF, which decided to concentrate on children from the scheduled caste (SC) community, since they were among the most illiterate.
First generation learners from among local SC youth were motivated to take up the survey as they could effectively tackle the illiterate parents.
The strategy was to motivate children: (a) 5-8 age group to enrol in formal schools, (b) 9-11 vears to break for a four-month summer camp and then enrol at schools/ government-run welfare hostels away from home, and (c) special two-year training for the 12-14 age group to write Standard VII exam as private candidates.
The process of the survey helped create awareness and motivate parents. The frequent questions asked were: "Does education give employment? How can we remove our children who are bonded to the landlord who has given us credit? ff we do so, who will give us credit in future?" In response, examples were cited of children in similar circumstances of poverty who were attending school. Former child bond labourers performed street plays, which motivated the working kids to join school.
All the environment building activities culminated in a mandal-level meeting involving employers, teachers, village elders, parents and volunteers. A major issue that was raised was that while it would be easy to mobilise all children to go to school, the local schools lacked the space and the teachers to absorb the additional numbers. It was decided to revive the defunct Parent Teacher Association (PTA) in all the villages and place the problems before them.
Monthly PTA meetings were held. Contribution of materials and free labour for building of temporary sheds to house classes were made. In almost every village, the PTA recruited one youth to help the government school teacher and the community contributed 30 to 50 per cent towards the teacher's salary. Consequently, they also felt that they could keep a check on the teacher's performance.
Several non-formal education (NFE) centres were set up in the mandal to provide a place to relax for child labourers in the 9-11 age group who were doing heavy work and were larger in number and more difficult to mainstream. Mini-camps of 3 days were organised each month for them to slowly withdraw the children from home and work.
This enabled the volunteers to convince the parents eventually that if they could do without the children's help for three days, they could do so for a longer time.
The emphasis in these camps being on fun and games with an element of formal teaching thrown in, many children ran away from work to join the camps. These short camps prepared the child for the 4-month-long summer camp. The children gradually learnt to resent their work and began to love to study.
At the summer camps, again using attractive and fun-filled methodologies, the children were trained intensively to reach the level of their peers in formal schools. At the end of the camp period, the children were straightaway enrolled into the free hostels run by the Department of Social Welfare for SC/STs and Backward Classes in every district.
It was felt that if the children returned home, the temptation would be to return to work after a short time, given the lack of a "culture of literacy" in their homes.
The principle underlying the hostels is to provide an atmosphere normally provided by parents in literate households, so essential for first generation learners. To help integrate the child into the school systems and life in the hostel, an MVF teacher visits the hostel daily, helps the children with home-work, etc. Each hostel has a parents' committee to monitor its functioning.
There is a special programme for the particularly difficult group of the 12-14 year old girls who have often never been to school before. It is not possible to bring these children to the level of their peers in the four-month summer camp. Hence they are prepared for the Standard VII exam in a two-year residential programme and then admitted into formal schools.
The prevalent view is that poverty is the root cause of child labour and, hence, it is necessary to compensate poor parents to enable them to send their children to school. The truth is that despite the highly inadequate facilities for education, a number of families which are as poor as those with working children send their children to school and not to work.
The Foundation does not totally deny the "harsh reality" argument but opines that the number of families for which the income of the child is crucial for survival is quite limited. It is possible to withdraw even bonded child labourers and admit them to formal schools without any compensation being paid either to the parents or employers. Parents are willing to make sacrifices to send their children to school.
Many parents sold cattle and they, or some other member of the family, took over the other tasks that used to be performed by the children. All this was possible merely through suitable motivation and harnessing of the unrecognized desire for education in both parents and children.
To those who consider that children cannot be asked to attend schools until the quality of schools is improved, MVF has shown that improvement in quality comes only after children are made to attend schools because the community then has a stake in the proper functioning of the school.
Another fallout of the campaign is that since children were no longer available to either supplement the family income or to labour, mothers began to demand higher wages for fewer hours of work from their employers since they were otherwise unable to cope with the work in and out of the house.
MVF has refrained from making the curriculum more "attractive" or "relevant" to the rural poor by introducing skills or trades. Such demands usually emanate from the privileged who are interested in perpetuating the existing social disparities. Further, this would dilute the academic content of the curriculum and foreclose the options of the rural poor from becoming anything other than manual workers.
These sections are all the more in need of an academic orientation because of the lack of such an environment in their homes, it says. It is also not possible to meaningfully vocationalise the education of children who are under 14 years of age, it opines.
In view of its experience, it is critical of the government's acceptance of the "harsh reality" argument without evaluating the true extent of this "reality". Since the government presumed that children had to work, it has provided non-formal education to them outside their working hours, without ensuring that they really had "no option but to work".
The NFE has hence become a means for legitimising child labour, it says. It is in effect "poor quality education for poor children". It is a low-cost strategy which enables the government to keep investments on formal education low by claiming that there are no takers for it. It envisages that poorly-trained local teachers will be creative enough to condense the eight-year elementary education course to five years, that too with only half-hour sessions every evening at less than one-fourth the salary of a regular teacher.
It also presumes that working children will be alert enough to absorb it all in half an hour and catch up with children who attend formal schools for six hours daily. The government is creating second class citizens who will never join the mainstream, it opines.
Some dismiss the MVF case as an isolated one which cannot be replicated. But governments and NGOs need to attempt the same experiment, at least in pilot project fashion, and grapple with the reality. Something has to be done to shatter the myth that children cannot be educated until poverty is removed.
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THE HINDU July 4, 1994
Bonded labour want wards educated
From R. J. Rajendra Prasad
SANKARAPALLI: The problems of child labour and school enrolment are interlinked. Social activists working for the M. Venkatarangaiva foundation (MVF) among child labour in a dozen villages of Ranga Reddy district have discovered that the illiterate parents are quite enthusiastic about sending their children to school despite their poverty. But they face the problem of lack of accommodation in the school, lack of teachers who have gone on leave or deputation, lack of space in hostels run by the Social Welfare Department because of the sudden spurt in enrolment.
Ramulu (10) from.Mokli village worked as a bonded labourer for a local patel and was paid Rs 1.200 a year for the past four years. ''My job was to tend the cattle in the morning, do housework, go on errands and tend to cattle again in the evening. I came to learn that a camp was being conducted for bonded labour children in this village and I simply ran away from home to be able to read. I want to work hard and do something different," he said.
The activists of the Foundation first identified the children working in the biscuit factories at Katedan on the outskirts of Hyderabad, and as agricultural labour in Hayatnagar and Sankarapalli mandals. They drew them to the non-formal education centres in the evenings where they were motivated to go to school and study. They then conducted a camp for four months where the children were taught the alphabet, arithmetic and social sciences through non-formal teaching methods, and were straightaway admitted to government schools in Classes III to Vl depending on their age. It is indeed gratifying to see these children pick up educational skills in such a short period.
"We find that ten per cent of these children are first class" says Mr Srinivas of MVF, who is in charge of the counsellors in these camps. It costs about Rs. 1,200 a child in the three-month camp and the funding is from UNESCO and CRY. The teachers, all bachelors, who live with the children in the camps, later work in the Social -Welfare hostels as counsellors, supplementing the teaching in school and helping them join the mainstream in a smooth way. Thanks to the intervention of the MVF, an additional 1,000 children have been enrolled in Government schools this year while 2.000 is the normal number in these ten villages.
There were 268 children in the Government school at Parveda but no teachers. The two posts are vacant. In Kothapalli village, there is one teacher for 106 children. The foundation formed parent teacher associations and put it to the community to ''sponsor" a teacher. "Community teachers" are recruited to work in Government schools on a salary of Rs. 700 per head. Rs. 500 of this contributed by UNESCO and Rs 200 by the community. It was a communitv teacher who supervised the annual examination in Masaniguda village because there was no Government teacher to do the job.
The parents of Masaniguda village staged a demonstration before the Mandal Development Office at SankarapalIi, demanding the posting of a teacher to their school. The MDO promised to post one by June, but no teacher has turned up.
In the summer camp conducted at Maharajpet village, there were in all 600 children, of whom 63 were bonded labourers, 240 belonged to the Scheduled Castes, 70 to the Scheduled Tribes and 228 to the Backward Classes. There were 25 Muslim children and 25 from the Forward Castes such as Reddys. Innovative methods were adopted to drive home lessons, said a teacher. The stories told by the children themselves were used as material which was cyclostyled and circulated. When a child starts to read the story, it recognises it immediately and the familiarity is used to identify the letters of the alphabet to read words and sentences. In the multiplication table for nine, the student puts nine dots in each of ten squares. To get an answer for 9 x 2 the student simply counts the dots in two squares and writes the answer. He does not memorise the multiplication table.
Mr. Venkata Reddy. convenor for the MVF staff, says the students are taken to the post office, made to purchase a post card and write a letter to their relatives. The delighted parents bring small gifts for the boys and girls.
One can perceive a change in the attitude of the villages. Children are withdrawn from bonded labour and the Patels are forced to engage adults on higher wages, such as Rs. 7,000 per year: Ms Shantha Sinha of MVF asserts that their experience during the past three years disproves the contention that children are not sent to school because of poverty. "We find that parents are enthusiastic. They are willing to spend money to educate the child once it is admitted in school. Reciprocate by providing basic requirements such as adequate number of teachers, accommodation and admission in hostels," she says.
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DECCAN CHRONICLE May 26, 1993
Drive to Draw Child Labourers to School in Sankarpalli By Y. SIVA SANKAR
City-bred people usually tend to describe each and every village as sleepy. But Proddatur in Shankarpalli mandal, Ranga Reddy district, is anything but sleepy. When this reporter visited the village recently, it was buzzing with activity late in the evening. A street play was to be staged in front of the Panchayat office and almost everyone among the audience of 600 seemed to be excited.
It was dark, so instantly made torches were pressed into service. They cast lengthy, dark and shapely shadows in all directions. A mist of dust slowly rose from the ground as roving villagers stamped the soil in their attempts to corner a convenient spot. The scene acquired a surrealistic dimension.
The occasion was the inaugural show of a street play called Bhoomithalli Biddalam (Children of Mother Earth). Written and directed by P.V. Purna Chandra Rao of the Ethnic Arts Centre, the play was designed to coax parents of'working kids into sending their children to schools.
The play featured about 15 students who were hitherto child labourers. They were supported by six others in the roles of adults. As for the storyline, Bhoomithalli Biddalam is essentially a blend of various factors that mark the lives of the underprivileged sections. The writer draws heavily from real-life incidents and weaves them into an absorbing narrative. Local dialect and song-like delineation make the play captivating for the audience.
The cast appears to have rehearsed its lines well and everything is slick and pacy, the latter impression being the result of the rhythmic dance by the cast which moves in a circle while narrating the story.
In the play, there is a child whose father has expired after taking a loan from a village money-lender. His widowed mother now has to repay the loan, come what may. The money-lender plots to exploit the situation and asks the woman to send even her little son to work at his place. but the child is interested in going to school. In the ensuing conflict, predictable things happen, much to the delight of the crowd.
Similarly, there is a girl child who wants to get educated. But her stubborn mother is more interested in initiating the girl into household chores and labour work. On another plane, there is a farmer who wishes to send his spoilt son to school. But the youngster would have none of it. There is also a school teacher who tries to make education interesting for kids and thereby lure more child labourcrs to her school. But the vcsted interests in the village try to thwart her attempts.
As is evident, Purna Chandra Rao's script is full of familiar details. But that is what makes it highly effective. Members of the audience - which includes kids, parents, landlords and others - identify themselves with various characters and watch the show in rapt attention. And the message of the play -- that children should be in schools and not in fields and workplaces and houses -- is communicated ever so subtly but forcefully. Aspects like humour, villainy and heroism are injected into the play in the right proportions and at the right moments. In fact, it is infotainment (information plus entertainment). At the end, students who acted in the play introduce themselves and explain how education has bettered their lives. This lends the play a touch of realism and authenticity.
Purna Chandra Rao is a full-time theatre activist who has been in the alternate theatre movement for the past 10 years. Having worked with Badal Sircar's Third Theatre and having been influenced by Brazilian director Augusto Boal, Rao developed an appropriate thcatre method to suit the rural working class in India. He has received several fellowships from abroad. Presently he is working under a three-year Dutch fellowship given by an autonomous body. His theatre work is accorded the status of research. He says, "I quit a handsomely paying job to satisfy my urge to be in the thick of theatre movement. But my indulgence is just not to get the better of my artistic itch. It is for realising the dream to work for a cause."
Bhoomithalli Biddalam is one of the many plays that Rao has penned. All his efforts are directed to spread awareness and information and better the lives of the underprivileged classes in rural as well as urban areas.
His Ethnic Arts Centre works for M. Venkatarangaiya Foundation, a registered trust founded by Professor Shantha Sinha of the Central University. The foundation aims to analyse and understand processes of social change. It also works for rural and community development work and to promote literacy and education at all levels.
It is rccognised by the Central human resources development department and other organisations like Child Relief and You (CRY) and the International Labour Organisation (ILO). The foundation's main aim now is to eradicate child labour in Ranga Reddy district.
As part of this programme, it organises a three-month pre-school camp for working children with emphasis on bonded labourers among them. Thereafter, these youngsters are admitted to government schools and social welfare hostels and the foundation sees to it that there is a minimum dropout rate.
The foundation has also set up non-formal education centres for girls where teaching schedules are as per the students' convenience. As part of its popularise-education project, it organises street plays in villages; the plays are handled by the Ethnic Arts Centre. They generally feature students who are beneficiaries of the schemes launched by the foundation. This is done to enhance the appeal of the plays while at the same time remaining within the financial constraints.
The foundation has identified certain areas where there is a high incidence of child labour. Focus will be shifted on to these areas and efforts made to attract the kids to schools. It hopes to widen the scope of its activities in the near future. So, all those who believe that there is no one, except the Clinton Administration, who bothers about child labour in Third World countries like India, they ought to think again.