Mridula Bajaj, Executive Director - Mobile Crèches

When did the education component project get included in the Mobile Crèches ?

Right from the initial days which is about thirty-five years back.

We started with the idea of just providing physical care to the young children on the construction sites but within a few days we realized that we have to go beyond just custodial care.

Children need to be occupied and the best way to keep them occupied is by providing them activities and these activities should lead to a goal, so education became our primary goal.

In which cities Mobile Crèches is running as of now ?

The programme runs in the three cities of Delhi, Mumbai and Pune. The Mumbai and Pune Branches came into existence in 1980 and 1974, very soon after the Delhi programme stabilized.

Soon thereafter the board realized that as an NGO, one cannot go on expanding.

We preferred to facilitate others rather than expanding ourselves.

It is not a profit making organisation so it was important to help other NGOs to do similar work, through training and other support.

It was important for us to focus our energies on retaining quality and for that we needed to remain small.

Why only Delhi, Mumbai, Pune - I think these are the cities - and not cities like Bangalore, Hyderabad... ?

We are looking at the child in the urban scenario within a larger context. Within this we are focusing upon the migrant child. Children keep coming from villages with their parents to construction sites and generally they have nothing to do except to provide support in household chores and help in the care of the young.

Mobile Crèches brings focus on the very young children from birth to 6 years of age groups as we feel that this is the most critical period for development in a Childs life. Most people support mainstreaming and providing institutional support etc, Mobile Crèches believes in all this but our goal is to make a foundation and we feel that if children don't survive due to mal nutrition or they grow up with all kinds of deficits, the investments required for remedial measures are very high. Investing in the young child is a proactive preventive strategy.

All the other expenses, the government spends on HIV/AIDs, street children, and deli guests will be saved if one invests in the young child. It ensures that the child will delinquency grow with a healthy foundation and the right start. Secondly the older children are deprived of education because there is nobody to look after the infants or younger children.

We also do a lot of awareness building on related issues as just the simple provision of services do not always lead you to the correct soluitions. These services are also not provided completely free.

There is always a user fee of minimum 2 Rs/month even if the cost for us is 500 Rs./month. By paying this amount they feel a sense of ownership. Building awareness is a continuous program. We have street theatre and use media extensively for the community.

Help is taken from experts, doctors etc. A holistic approach is employed. We are providing direct services to the child but we are also trying to weave in sustainability so that even when Mobile Crèche is not there these people are prepared to deal with difficult situations.

They become aware of the need to go to the doctor, the basics about hygiene and sanitation etc. There are about 1600 slums, which don't have adequate toilet facilities.

This is a basic fundamental right of people, where do they go ? Sanitation is also a major cause of all other problems.

What is the syllabus ?

We have a non-formal approach, we give them basic skills of life, which are important for today's life. They should know how to respond to basic illness.

It is important for them to know the basic legal rights, what they should do in case of a problem. So we provide them with very fundamental information.

Basic literacy also assumes significance, how to make a money order, open a bank account etc.

From what standard to what standard you provide education ?

At the construction site the program goes up to 12 years. We focus on the very young child at the policy level and at the lobbying level with the Government but we don't leave them out after that.

So our program includes the adolescent also because it is the whole life cycle approach that we employ.

We have a very good relationship with all our children. They come with their problems, if they are going under stress or any other problem, we have special programs for them also.

We don't call it an education program as such. But the formal education goes up to 12 years and then we facilitate tutorial support. We try and get volunteers to support them in their weak subjects.

Our main aim in the urban scenario is to mainstream them. We ensure that every child who goes through our programme gets admission into formal school.

We don't want to duplicate services but we are preparing them to get enrolled in school. We are helping them to learn.

Are you planning to widen your base ?

We are more into training and sharing our expertise with others. We have trained till now about 3000 women from about 100 NGOs and other community members over a period of time.

Deepalya, CASP, Tilonia, Jagori, Urmul etc. all these NGOs have received training from us. We are building the base for other NGOs, so it makes no point for us to also go there and start work.

We expect that the NGOs would incorporate Early Child Hood Care and Development with their work. Our idea is to bring the issues of the young child in to everybody's agenda.

Education does not start at 6 years. You cannot expect a child to suddenly start writing and doing well without any foundation.

Development actually starts at birth and therefore to strengthen education one has to adopt the life cycle approach.

We firmly believe in very high quality work. We want an approach, which is more sustainable in the long run.

What is the age profile of your students ? And what percentage of your children are girls ?

It goes up to 12 years and regarding the % of girls, it is largely equal.

We do encourage girls specially to carry on with their education.

In some ways we do make a choice in favor of girls, when we give scholarship etc., but we are concerned with all the children.

What is the drop out rate ?

At the construction site, the movement of labour and the constant migration influences the number of children attending jour programme.

We have very little control as their movement largely depends on, whether they have received their payments or whether they have decided to return to their villages because of an emergency.

Tracking is very difficult but we do try to keep in touch with some of our older children but the reality is so different.

It is difficult to keep a track of them so it is almost impossible to keep such records.

Who teaches the students ? Regular teachers, Volunteers and is there any manual for them ?

All the workers in our organisation are paid employees. There is a separate volunteer program, which goes side by side but we have around 130 paid staff in Delhi. We have a highly structured organization.

Most of our staff joined us about 20-30 years ago. We also provide training to semi literate and non-literate women for early childcare.

We don't think literacy per se is important to provide care for young children. We have special modules of training for them.

There is a constant in-service training program, conducted every month for our staff at the head office.

Do you have a manual which can be given to other NGOs which would start such a project under your umbrella or otherwise

We have a host of manuals and books, which we provide and share with other NGOs and I am happy to say that a lot of NGOs have started this program on child care because of our intervention.

The concept of Aanganwadi, Balwadi is derived from the Mobile Crèches programme.

Can this project be replicable in other cities ?

We are hoping it to happen but it is very difficult to work with construction site workers. Some times there is no room, no fan etc. and I feel most of the people don't prefer working in these conditions.

Also, in our day care project we are working with very young children, which is very expensive due to the need for a high adult child ratio. Imparting education to older children as compared to our program is much cheaper.

It is a program with lots of responsibilities, so very few NGOs want to take it. They prefer to be much rather involved with children above 6 years.

What is the Funding pattern ?

We raise 30% of the funds on our own through our sponsorship and other programs. The rest is raised from Government and other agencies. We don't go for regular Government schemes because of the long paper work involved.

Currently we are running into a high deficit and through out the year our agenda is to close the gaps and meet the requirements but it is not easy especially for our advocacy work.

We have talked to a number of corporates but they are more concerned about, " what is there for us in this proposal". The challenge is to tap the vast potential within India for which one requires and strong Resource Mobilization team.

Builders put how much money ? What is your relationship with the builders ?

Builders do share some part of the cost of the project. But it varies from builder to builder. It varies from 10% to 70% of the total cost. They provide the basic infrastructure like space electricity etc and sometimes they provide local helpers as well.

Some of these services are mandatary by law. Anyway provision of crèches at construction sites is beneficial, for them in the long run as it prevents on site accidents.

A large number of builders are now doing it on their own after seeing our project and its benefits and many of them are committed to it and have incorporated crèches as part of policy.

It is not a very good relationship we share with the builders as they are reluctant to subsidize their profit. They also feel that making buildings is their core business and they do not have they know how to run such programmes.

Which funding agencies support you ?

Nearly all the funding agencies have had partnerships with us in a span of the past 35 years.

Currently we have Bernard Van Leev Foundation, Plan International, IGSSS Save the Children have supported our work for many years.

What are your concerns ?

As an NGO, my concern is that we have been in this field for so many years but we actually have not been very successful in making the dent for the young child.

I recently went to US and I found there is so much awareness among the general public on how important it is to us invest in the young child. This concern is missing in India. Everybody is now talking about Education, just because Amrtya Sen has brought it to India. There is a hype of education, education at any cost.

The "Abhiyaan" has suddenly caught everybody's fancy You find NGOs, alliances coming together Sarva Shiksha on this issues but people are not going deep into this. The 86th constitutional amendment left out the child under 6 years and that's a big set back to us.

If the foundations are not strong how can one expect universalization - the issues of learning, drop out rates keep emerging. Blame is put on the poor people without looking at the real reasons.

People should realize that if the foundations are weak if, the children don't have enough to eat and they are suffering from diseases all the time, where will they find time to learn.

So, I think a holistic approach for community development needs to be taken up and we should focus on the whole life cycle approach.

That is for me the primary concern, not picking small issues here and there and wanting to achieve all. We are not talking here about numbers, we are here talking about people and people in their entire aspect.

What can others who would start a similar project learn from you in terms of avoiding some issues or focusing energies on some issues ?

Actually the learning cannot be inducted so soon. But still the following are important steps to be taken;

1) Involve the community in all your decisions making processes.

2) Have good human resource, as without it none of your program can be successful, so invest in them, pay them well and give them good training.

3) You should have good systems in place, for instance feed back systems, monitoring systems etc. and then also look for financial stability for the NGO, which we did not. So from the beginning one should look into all these issues.

- Madhavi Mehta
( Mumbai )