M.V.FOUNDATION Presentation to Planning Commission Civil Society Window Shantha Sinha

1. M.V.FOUNDATION Presentation to Planning Commission Civil Society Window Shantha Sinha Prof.Aditya Mukherjee, Prof.Mridula Mukherjee, M.R.Vikram, Dr. Himanshu

2. MVFoundation-Profile • 400,000 children withdrawn from work and mainstreamed into formal schools in Andhra Pradesh • 15000bonded laborers have been released • 25000adolescent girls have accessed schools • 80000 volunteers and members of Child Rights Protection Forums on a voluntary basis • 2500 government teachers involved actively in abolition of Child Labour

3. MVF in India Andhra Pradesh Madhya Pradesh Bihar Rajasthan Maharashtra Tamil Nadu Assam Orissa & Nepal Rural and Urban Poor Tribal Communities Migrant Labour Coastal population

4. MVF’s perspective Recognition of an explosive demand for education among poor parents and their willingness to make enormous sacrifices

5. Some Guiding Principles of MVF’s Programme • Child Labor defined as “all children out of school” • Poverty is no excuse for Child Labour • All children must be in full time formal day schools • All work to a Child is hazardous • No parallel institutions set up, in fact existing institutions strengthened • Youth activists as anchors and conscience keepers of the entire program who work relentlessly for children’s rights

6. Components of MVF Strategy Resolving conflicts and establishing a social norm that no child must work and all children must be in schools • All mobilization to result in institution building • Child Rights Protection Forum • Teachers Forum for Liberation of Child Labour • Gram Panchayats • Petition to departments concerned • For release of bonded labor and stopping child marriages • For change in school governance • Bus facilities etc • Creation of a resource base of child rights activists taking independent actions, offering technical support to other agencies (official and NGOs) Inclusion on the basis of commitment for abolishing child labor, stopping child marriages, and protection of children’s right to education through full time formal schools, and planning for every child

7. Mainstreaming Children-Some Methods

8. Impact • Children become children, parents become parents, men share in domestic work, families become families • Changes in school governance and procedures of admission, issuing of transfer certificates, examinations for older children in schools, and demand for quality education • Deepening of democracy with members of CRPF getting elected for gram panchayats and other local bodies, gram panchayats take pride in speaking for children’s rights • Stopping of girl child marriage, emergence of girl youth forums • Issue of children in 0-6 years comes to the forefront

9. The Economic Impact Wage increase for adults Child labour causes Poverty and depresses Quality of Life

10. Impact in Shankarpalle

11. Status of child labour and school attendance in Andhra Pradesh-Some Positive Notes • Rajasthan and Andhra Pradesh are the two states with highest jump in educational attendance ratios between 1991 and 2001. AP showed an increase of 25%and Rajasthan 26%as against an all India increase of 16% • Rajasthan showed a jump of 31% and AP 29% as against an all India jump of 19% for girls • AP jumped from 13th position to 4th position in case of girls in between 1991 and 2001next only to Kerala, Himachal Pradesh and Tamil Nadu .

12. Challenges in MVF project area in AP • Not enough school teachers at upper primary and high school level and teachers under pressure for better exam results and therefore systematically discourage children from taking the board examinations in class 10 • Corporal punishment, insults, lack of text books, insistence on payment of school fees, school uniforms, push children out and especially from class six onwards • Growth of fee charging private schools shows demand from the poor • Girls in 13-14 years find it difficult to stay in school and away from marriage • Over reporting of children in schools-only 420000 children out of schools in AP in 2004-05 according to SSA

13. Class wise DISE data- 1996-97 to 2005-06 in Andhra PradeshEstimating Dropouts through Cohort Analysis

14. Crucial Dropout Years

15. Challenges • The entire education system • has to be prepared to accept the backlog of millions of children in full time formal school with their complex backgrounds • Take up the responsibility for integrating them and not push them out as they do not have the required standards

16. What needs to change • The Nation must believe that is POSSIBLE to abolish child labour and universalise education and provide both the Legal and the Normative Framework to make it happen. • Campaign Mode • To motivate all sections of society for TOTAL abolition of child labour • Emphasis on Process and Institution building and not on data and targets. • Community Mobilization-v ia Gram Panchayats- & Youth Activists -the key to effective universalisation • Area Based Approach • To cover universe of all children in a 6-14 year Age group who are both in schools and out of schools • Distinction between hazardous and Non-hazardous work must go • Provide for children continuing in schools upto ClassX • Funding Allocation must be demand driven • Pattern of Expenditure to be varied based on Demand • Need for sustained expenditure over defined periods of time WITHOUT a break • Right to Education as a National Law