Strategy

MVF has a firm conviction that all children upto 18 years of age must be in school and that it is possible to abolish child labour and must be done at any cost.

In order to implement and see it to fruition, MVF has various strategies in place.

Social Mobilsation and Institution Building
Activity Strategy Output
Consensus building and Mobilisation
  • Holding of public meetings, rallies, marches, utilising every public function to highlight the child rights issue. Conferences with members of gram panchayats, SECs, Women’s groups, youth groups.
  • Induction of teachers through trainings, provision of support structures in the Villages.
  • Street theatre, child-to-child campaigns and use of children as resource persons.
  • Petitions to the government by the gram panchayats, and School Education Committeesfor enhancing school infrastructure.
  • All the efforts at mobilisation culminates in creation of local institutions which would eventually take up the issue of protection of child rights.
  • Formation of Child Rights Protection Committees, School Education Committees and Forum for Liberation of Child Labour (Youth and Teachers’ wing).

 

Community Level Strategies for Reaching Out to Children
Strategy Activity
Motivation Centres: To give children confidence to study
  • Older children are enlisted in these centres.
  • Motivation Centres established under the auspices of the school headmaster. They run in the morning from 7 am, to 9 am and depending upon response the timings are gradually extended.
  • Children are given confidence to read and write.
  • The centres become forums for assertion of rights of the children.
  • Once most children in the motivation centres have been withdrawn from work and enrolled in schools (via residential bridge courses) the motivation centres are automatically wound up.
Short term camps (3 days) : Help children to self-motivate as well as gain support from parents
  • Children from 3 to 4 villages are all brought together for a short period.
  • About 200 such children who have never been to school learn to draw strength from each other in these three days.
  • Simultaneously track the adjustment parents have made in sharing the work of the children while they were away during that time.
Establishment of Residential Bridge Course Camps
  • Children are motivated to go to schools,Parents, Teachers and the Community are preparedto accept the norm that children ought to be in schools.Camps serve the purpose of mobilisation, training and resource needs.
Strategies & Activities for Retention of Children in Schools
Strategy Activity
Class 1 and Summer Schools: To facilitate children move into higher classes, on par with their age.
  • Provide for adequate number of education volunteers (at the ratio of 1:40 children).
  • Conduct bridge course for all the 80 to 100 children under the supervision of the school headmaster and with support from the School Education Committees and gram Panchayats during summer vacations.
Bridge Course in Formal School: To help the older children learning in their local schools without having to join a residential camp, thus resulting in designing and planning for the progress of every child and enable the empowerment of teachers in the process.
  • To cater to older children to encourage and join schools the teachers implement the bridge course programme.
  • When children are large in numbers, a special section for them in the school shall be established. If there are only two or three children at a time, they were made to sit with children of their age group.
  • Soon children are trained to go into classes according to their age.
  • Teachers evolve child specific plan for admission to the right class.
Prevention of children dropping out of schools after class 5 and class 7 through an institutional arrangement helps in an easy transmission of children to the next school.
  • The responsibility for shifting children from one school to another is with the schools and not with the parents.
  • To prevent the problems of retention of children in middle and high schools, due to inadequate teaching facilities resulting in poor performance of children in schools and consequently dropping out conditions have to be improved.
Accommodation
  • The community to mobilise funds for the programme under the Janmabhoomi scheme, District Primary Education Programme and also donations in cash and kind from the villagers themselves.
School Education Committees give confidence to the parents to send the children back to school as well as mobilise resources to support the salaries of education volunteers and also for the construction of classrooms
  • To establish School Education Committees.
  • School Education Committees shall motivate children to join schools, follow up with dropouts. The School Education Committees will take an active role in negotiating with the employers to withdraw children engaged in bonded labour from work and also in stopping of girl-child marriages.
  • School Education Committees shall be motivated to improve the infrastructure of the schools.