ASSOCIATION
FOR PROMOTING SOCIAL ACTION
‘Namma Mane’,34
Annasandrapalya, Vimanapura Banglore 560 017.
The Association for promoting Social Action is a child centered
community development organisation. With over two decades of grassroots
experience, the focus of the organisation is on the development of street and
working children, children in slums and those in distress. The ingenuity of
APSA is exemplified by the various projects under its administration in
Bangalore and Hyderabad. Most of these projects stand as appropriate paradigms
in the field of social development and are unique for their impact orientation,
participatory processes, cost effectiveness, and self-sustenance. APSA is also
a major advocacy and training organisation in the country. Our trainees include
the Bangalore city police and the Juvenile service bureau of the Karnataka
State Government.
The following proposal is designed to prevent school going
children in urban slums from dropping out of schools and becoming child
labourers. Though the proposal is primarily for the potential child labour
center's, a brief mention of all the components of the child labour project
have been enclosed for a holistic comprehension of the child labour project of
APSA.
Insisting on compulsory education without a qualitative
improvement in the environment of the schools can do more harm than good. While quality education reveals its
relevance, the system in corporation and other government schools usually
encourages students to drop out. Most boys who drop out end up in the labour
market as child labourers making urban slums the biggest feeder blocs for child
labourers in cities. Girls also start working at a very young age and are often
married off in their early teens thereby continuing the vicious cycle of
poverty into the next generation. Access to appropriate education is crucial in
the formative years of a child's growth and development.
Given the status of corporation schools and the magnitude of the
child labour problem in slums, Intervention at this stage is thus not only
important but also imperative.
Background
of the Organisation
APSA is a grassroots Community development organisation with a
focus on the development of the community of the urban slums, Street children,
Child labourers and Children in distress (child victims of prostitution,
Abandoned children, Runaway children etc.). The organisation was started in
1981 by a group of youth with trade union and sociology backgrounds with a mission
of empowering the underprivileged sections of the community especially in the
slums of Hyderabad and Bangalore. With vast experience in development work,
APSA is attempting systematic development of the urban poor by integrating
social paradigms of self-sufficiency at the family level with campaigns and
advocacy at the macro level. With right to participation and protagonism as its
base, we believe in the strength of the People and their ability to fight for their
own rights.
APSA is one of the earliest organisations, which vehemently spoke
of and has been successful in implementing the idea of 'People centered
Development'. In effect, this People centered Development has taken the form of
the 12 comprehensive projects. Each of them stands as a testimony to APSA's commitment towards
equality and justice.
Slum Outreach project
Activities
in this project is based on the following principles
* Right
to Awareness
*
Political empowerment
*
Economic empowerment
APSA is involved in Social mobilization and formation of groups
and Sangha's of women and youth in the slums towards realizing their basic
rights like drinking water, sanitation, ration card, voter's list etc. Long
term programs like Legal aid, cadre building, leadership workshops, land issues,
Housing are taken up in 10 slums of Bangalore and 30 slums in Hyderabad.
Namma Mane (Our home)
A Home and a residential training center for street and working
children, and children in distress. Nammane is a crisis intervention and
development project for girls and boys in extreme circumstances. Nammane is
open 24 hours to provide immediate protection and shelter for children.
Counseling, Health, Nutrition, Recreation, Life skills etc are provided to
children.
Vikas
Though Bangalore city has over one million people living in its
700 slums, people in general are ignorant of this fact and many other immediate
social issues and are indifferent to any development efforts at the slum level.
A genuine and self-sustaining development of our society requires the participation
of all its sections. Vikas is a serious attempt made by APSA to involve
students from upper and middle class students in the development activities of
the poor. The project was evolved along with 100 students of Christ College.
These students work every Saturday with APSA in three groups - street children,
child labourers and the urban poor.
Vikas award encourages students from university colleges to engage in a
competitive debate on issues related to social development. 10 colleges
participated in this competition in 1998.
Slum federation
APSA is facilitating three slum federations in Bangalore and
Hyderabad. The objective of this is to create an opportunity for local slum
dwellers to come together at the city level as a force in their efforts to gain
basic facilities, dignity and human rights. The two federations in Hyderabad
have representatives from 20 slums.
Inchara
A
cultural group based on the concept of the people's theatre. Cultural
activities including street plays, puppetry, clay work etc. are used for
recreation and as a tool for social mobilization and a form of struggle in
achieving the objectives of the self-help group.
Makkala Mane
More than 50 children migrate into Bangalore each day in search of
jobs and a secure future. Most of them, if not all end up on the streets or in
menial exploitative jobs. APSA's experience shows that the first day after the
child's arrival is the most crucial day in his life. Makkala Mane is a joint
project of APSA, DCP West and Makkala Sahaya Vani. Activists who identify the
child in the railway station bring the child to a transit shelter. After
counseling, support is provided for the child to go back home. Activists from
APSA have been able to help 350 children to go back home in the past three
months alone (Jan-March 99).
Makkala Sahaya Vani
A hotline for children in crisis. A project in collaboration with
the Bangalore City Police Commissioner and a core group of NGO's. APSA has
provided facilities to 200 children since the inception of Makkala Sahaya Vani.
Hasiru Sangha
Contributing to and working under the recommendations of the convention on the rights of the child,
APSA facilitates a Child labourers collective called Hasiru Sangha. This sangha
organises meetings of child labourers, discusses their problems and advocates
against child labour. There are five units of Hasiru sangha in as many slums.
400 child labourers are regular members of this sangha and actively participate
in its programs.
Child labour centers
Working on realising the rights of the child by providing
opportunities to get back to the main stream of education, avenues for
vocational training and recreation in the slums. There are 4 child labour
centers in Bangalore and 3 in Hyderabad open from 4pm to 9pm every day.
Potential child labour Centers
Children in Corporation schools usually drop out from school at
the age of 11 onwards to be engaged in a job. The quality of education plays an
important role in this situation. APSA is running formal classes for students from 7 to 10 std students in Math and
Science. 2 Ext. Schools in Bangalore slums. 100% results have been sustained in
one of the classes in Marathalli.
Vocational
Skill training
As a part
of Income generating program for Women and Youth of the slums. 3 centers in
Bangalore. 2 in Hyderabad.
SHG
A relatively new project, building Self Help groups among the
poorest families of the urban slums has started in earnest. The opportunity to establish
a novel concept in urban SHG's has resulted in the formation of over 70 groups
involving more than 1500 women in Bangalore and Hyderabad.
APSA's Aim
To work with the community of the urban poor, child labourers and
the government to establish appropriate social paradigms to prevent children
from working and to provide protection, nutrition, legal aid and sustainable
alternatives to children already in exploitative situations.
Objectives of APSA
* To act as a catalyst to help improve the conditions of the
underprivileged and economically backward communities and to help solve their
problems through their own strengths and efforts.
* To evolve comprehensive plans and create social paradigms to
improve the conditions and living standards of street children and child
labourers.
* To enable social development through the organisation of
co-operatives that will engage in Social education, Technical training and
Empowerment.
* To create a spirit of solidarity, self-reliance and self-respect
among the socially marginalised people.
* To ensure participation of the community, especially women and
children in developmental activities.
* To strengthen their involvement and understanding of culture
through the use of traditional and folk forms of art, drama, literature, poetry
and music.
TACKLING
CHILD LABOUR - APSA's approach
With nearly two decades of work experience at the grassroots
level, we have realized that the economic exploitation of children is an
integral component of a vicious circle linking poverty, illiteracy and child
labour. Grassroots work subjects an organization to many challenges. While
educating the masses with all its different dimensions is a major task by
itself, promoting it as a solution for child laborers, school dropouts and
street children borders with obscurity.
Mere physical removal of children from the exploitative situation is not
an adequate measure to tackle a problem that is so deep-rooted and concealed. The compulsory primary education approach
with its ambiguous compulsion on the parents is also not practicable without
adequate infrastructure and appropriate education. For our intervention efforts
to be truly empowering, the child needs to be adequately prepared through basic
literacy, awareness about rights, and through avenues and viable alternatives
like vocational training and self-employment opportunities.
Our intervention efforts and programmes in various slums of the
city focus on the preventive rehabilitative components.
(a) Preventive aspects:
Notable in the area of prevention are our
* Potential Child Labour Centres (PCLC)
* The Back to School/ Sponsorship programmes
* Advocacy
* Child sponsorship
(b) Rehabilitative aspects:
The other end of the continuum of our child labor program is the
rehabilitative component consisting of
* Child Labour Centres.
* Vocational training at Nammane, APSA's regional residential
training center for street and working children.
* Back to school program
* Hasiru Sangha, the child labourers collective.
Aiming at a participatory
development of child labourers with an active involvement of the local
community, the activities of the child labour centers in the slums is
comprehensive consisting of a variety of inputs. These centers play a
multiplicity of functions, and are literacy centers that combine the functions
of recreation, creating social awareness, and learning through innovative
means. The centers run in the evenings for the convenience of those who have
morning work. Other important components of the centers include motivation of
parents, interfacing with employers and crisis intervention. Training options
are offered to those interested in pursuing vocational training, and such
students are referred to APSA's Nammane. Children who have dropped out of
school are helped through the Back to School program and enrolled in formal
schools.
The Child Labour Centres
also work in tandem with the Hasiru Sangha, a Child Labourers' Collective
facilitated by APSA. The Sangha is a platform for the children to unite
themselves, fight exploitation and seek their rights by voicing their opinions,
thereby participating in and contributing to the process of empowerment.
Through its activities, the Sangha helps in spreading social and economic
awareness among households and communities affected by child labour. Currently,
more than 500 child labourers from around Bangalore are active members of
Hasiru Sangha. The Sangha forms a strategic link in effecting changes at the
micro, meso and macro levels.
APSA is currently running
three child labour centers at Manjunathnagar, Rajendranagar and Byappanahalli
slums and two Potential child labour centers at Rajendranagar and
Manjunathnagar slums. With APSA having its slum outreach activities in 15 slums
of Bangalore with a large number of child labourers, there is not only a need
but also an opportunity for children to benefit from more such literacy centers
in the slums.