www.civilsocietyindia.com,www.civilsocietyonline.com

Séverine Fumoux
Gurgaon

THE people with the needles are back! This came from a happy five-year-old boy as he spied volunteers arriving for a vaccination drive. Children unafraid of injections? The boy’s parents are construction workers in Gurgaon. He ran out of a local Mobile Creches centre, one of 64 that the NGO has set up in Delhi, Mumbai and Pune. Children of poor urban migrants are doubly neglected; their parents are excluded from public services and they are part of an overall ignored age group. Mobile Creches field centres, located in construction sites or in resettlement colonies and bastis, provide a safe haven. Children get two square meals a day, education from birth to 12 years of age, and lots of love and care. Otherwise, these children would have been rag-picking or doing odd jobs for their parents. When Mobile Creches started in Delhi in 1969, it provided daycare services to the children of construction workers. It pioneered an Early Childhood Care and Education programme (ECCE) for thedevelopment of underprivileged children from birth to six years of age. It soon created centres in Mumbai and Pune, and was the first NGO to develop a systematic model of temporary daycare centres in labour camps and slums. In each Mobile Creches’ centre there is an anganwadi, a balwadi, a non-formal education room, a kitchen with drinking water, a toilet and a playground. Trained care workers, and teachers provide tailor-made guidance to each child’s learning. An amount of Rs 600 per month is allocated to every child, along with an individual medical card showing records of immunisation and health checks. Most construction sites have now moved from Delhi to Noida and Gurgaon. It is becoming increasingly hard for Mobile Creches to find the human resources for this expansion and to centrally coordinate logistics.

________________________ Most contractors pay lip service to the Building and Other Construction Workers’ Act (1996), a law that Mobile Creches fought to bring in for 20 years. ________________________

Mobile Creches’ team members agree that apart from a few exceptions like Unitech, building contractors have always taken little responsibility for their workers’ welfare, let alone the needs of their children. Mobile Creches face apathy or even rejection when they acquire the building of a creche on a construction site. Most contractors pay lip service to the Building and Other Construction Workers’ Act (1996), a law that Mobile Creches fought to bring in for more than 20 years. It is meant to guarantee provisions for workers’ children. But few contractors want to engage with Moblie Creche workers when the creche is set up. The common opinion of Shapoorji Pallongi’s managing team, a contractor employed by DLF, echoes prejudices against the migrants’ children: “They can’t learn anything!” or “Why do you care for those children? They are too young to be taught.” Very few builders or contractors take the initiative to set up creches on new construction sites. In Gurgaon, DLF authorities have disengaged from Mobile Creches’ work and have delegated full responsibility for the welfare of children of construction workers to their sub-contractors. The response of companies to Mobile Creches’ demands vary enormously from one creche site to the other.

This reflects discrepancies in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) policies. Clearly, more efforts are needed from the corporate sector. This is why Mobile Creches decided not to focus on building new centres but to concentrate on developing advocacy strategies, starting with a rights awareness campaign for parents. “When a worker registers, he realises he can get all the benefits that come with it, including provisions for the young child and the mother,” said Mridula Bajaj, executive director. At the same time, Mobile Creches’ workers patrol construction sites to enroll more children and sensitise mothers about health and play-way learning. Campaigns on nutrition and hygiene are run regularly. There are ‘mothers’ meetings’ at each centre which serve as a discussion platform. Mobile Creches follows a very inclusive approach. The door is always open for parents and their children. Holistic education is the norm. The girl child’s education is given importance. She learns basic school skills and is given vocational training according to her abilities. To bridge the knowledge gap, Mobile Creches takes the help of multi-skilled volunteers and constantly talks to parents about the child’s progress. “Parents want to know what their children do at the centre but they don’t see the use of education until you ask them the question: do you want your children to work like you or to be like us? Then they think again,” says Deepak Syal, a computer engineer from Gurgaon, who volunteers at the creche near his office on weekends.

However, the successful integration of the child requires the intervention of outside agencies. Mobile Creches is constantly building ties with different agencies whether it is for immunisation or enrollment into a mainstream school after 12 years. The task seems almost impossible because with a high turnover of labour on site, children stay at the creche between three to six months. But the NGOs workers turn this time into an interactive discovery of basic skills and knowledge that each child needs. “Every effort is worth it!” says Bajaj. As the demand for migrant labour in Gurgaon has grown, more children are coming in, making it impossible to cater to all their needs. To address this issue, Mobile Creches not only facilitates professional training in ECCE to local women, it also imparts training to NGOs involved with young children. The organisation has built expertise and resources over three decades with the help of doctors, educationists and activists. Its in-service training package (including follow-ups and refresher courses) demonstrates an ECCE model backed with cognitive development theories. It has been delivered to more than 100 NGOs and several thousand women so far. Mobile Creches has engaged in dialogue with people in resettlement colonies and slums to build grassroots capacity. Empowered women are becoming the spokespeople of both the community and the child.

The women have started running clubs and classes with the help of adolescent groups. In Madanpur Khadar, outside Delhi, a Self- help Group (SHG) has opened an anganwadi, and Mobile Creches’ trainers have relocated on site with them. When Mobile Creches co-founded the Forum for Creche and Child Care Services (FORCES) in the 80s, it was one of many steps to coordinate the efforts of NGOs and institutions. The NGO has fought for the child’s place in India’s Constitution. It has participated in Right to Food campaigns and striven to give ECCE the place it deserves in the ICDS programme.