CASE STUDY ON BALJYOTHI

Baijyothi: Bringing child labour into schools An estimated 164 million children of primary school age live in South Asia. Of these, 42 million (25 per cent) do not attend school. Approximately 23 million (55 per cent) of these are girls. Globally, South Asia accounts for 35 per cent of the world’s out-of-school children. The Millennium Development Goals call for achieving gender parity in net enrolment by 2005 and for universal primary school enrolment by 2015. Six of the eight countries in South Asia account for virtually all of the region’s 42 million unenrolled children.

Over the last decade, addressing the problems of out-of-school children has generated a debate on the whole issue of child labour, working children and their lack of access to education in the state of Andhra Pradesh, which boasts the highest number of working children in the country. Twenty per cent of these children are full-time workers and 60 per cent in the age group of 5 tol4 years never attend school. The 1991 census has shown that there are approximately 17.5 lakh child workers in the state, of whom a large proportion belongs to the scheduled caste/scheduled tribes. Around 52 per cent of the child workforce comprises girls (Government of Andhra Pradesh
1999).
However, no reliable statistics are available to assess the current number of working children. Using the strict definition as per the law to identify the total number of child labour can result in very skewed estimations. The Child Labour Act, 1986, is based on a distinction drawn between child labour considered as exploitative and hazardous and child work considered to be enabling and non-hazardous. A 1997 Survey Report of the Labour Department, Government of Andhra Pradesh, places the number of children in hazardous occupations at 7,761 and in non-hazardous occupations at 39,000 -- way below the 1991 census estimates. As per this survey, there are 105 children in hazardous occupations and 2,654 children in non-hazardous occupations in the city of Hyderabad -- figures that by any measure are a gross underestimation of the scale of the problem
The debate on defining child labour has taken on a new dimension with the efforts of organisations like the MV Foundation and the Baijyothi Project. These organisations reject the restrictive official definition of child labour; instead they locate it in the context of access to primary education and child rights, thereby bringing within its purview all children in the age group of 5 to 14 years who are out of school. A growing number of NGOs in the state subscribe to this view, It would not be out of place to recognise the role that MV Foundation has played in foregrounding this perspective and evolving effective strategies to address the issue of the education of child labour and, indeed, to eliminate child labour itself. This effort has spawned similar attempts by other voluntary organisations and is clearly reflected in the Baljyothi project. The perspective has also gained acceptance and informed strategies to tackle the issue of child labour education within the state government sector itself, in programmes such as the District Primary Education Programme (DPEP) -- which operates not only in Andhra Pradesh but in other states as wefi.
Another position that is challenged is the poverty argument -- that child labour is an inevitable harsh reality, that parents have no other option but to send their children to work and earn to supplement the household income. There is now wide recognition of the need to evolve strategies not only for rehabilitation but also to prevent the creation of succeeding generations of child workers.
The effort by Baljyothi is to simultaneously mobilise communities and create the circumstances, environment and infrastructure to enable all children to have access to schooling. An equally firm commitment is to provide formal education to all children, rejecting any form of non-formal education options.
While there have been very successful initiatives in the rural context, Baljyothi, a National Child Labour Project (NCLP), is one of the first in Aridhra Pradesh to address the issue of child labour education in an urban context and that, too, on scale. It also underscores an effective partnership between an NGO and the government.
II Moving from micro-level insights to a project
The formulation Of the Baljyothi project was the outcome of two seemingly parallel efforts, one by the government and the other by Pratyamnaya, an NGO, to address the issue of education and arrive at a common understanding. it is crucial to grasp the junctures of this interaction and intersection. The micro-level insights gained by the NGO were successfully translated into a large project under the National Child Labour Programme. It must be noted that an enthusiastic, committed NGO met with a positive response from successive District Collectors, and this synergy led to the formulation of Baijyothi.
In 1989, the Hyderabad Akshara Jyothi Samiti (TLC) was formed to make literacy a social movement. Launched in 1990 in the slum areas of the city, the TLC brought within its fold women and children below the age of 14 who had missed schooling. In the post-literacy phase, feedback came in that while children are interested in going to school, family circumstances and the lack of

educational access opportunities denied them the right to education. It was clear that the social development visualised by TLC would not be realised unless the issue of child labour was
addressed squarely.
Around the same time, Sharat Babu Vasireddy, who was on an Ashoka Fellowship, through his NGO Pratyamnaya, was attempting to both understand as well as explore strategies to eliminate child labour in Hyderabad. The effort was to evolve innovative strategies to combine community initiatives for primary education with protecting the rights of the child, to create formal educational opportunities and, in the process, facilitate the revitalisatiori of the mainstream educational system.
This exploration began n one basti, Borabanda in Secunderabad. The experiences gained in this basti were to later inform the formulation of the larger National Child Labour Project for the city of Hyderabad. In the initial stages, the NGO began a dialogue with local youth, basti leaders and women. These discussions gradually led to the mobilisation of the larger community around their identified needs for basic amenities like electricity, roads, etc. Leadership training was initiated around an articulation of demands within the context of the community’s basic rights. Not surprisingly, education was not a priority concern. Schools were way down the list, after ration cards, electricity, drainage and employment. It was the basti women who first began to express concern about the future of their children and gradually, issues relating to their education came to the fore.
Interactions with the community revealed that the problem of schooling was compounded by issues of migration, lack of government schools in the vicinity, and a gradual drift of boys and girl away from education and into work. Another crucial issue was the total absence of community leadership. This impacted negatively on any attempt to address the bastis problems — whether relating to education or livelihood concerns.
Given this situation, Pratyamnaya’s effort was to stop the drift away from schooling and initiate a process of developing and strengthening community leadership and initiative. A decision was taken to start three schools for 500 children with the help of the District Collector. It must be remembered that from the beginning, Pratyamnaya’s effort was to link with the formal system and the government. Initially, the response from the District Collectorate was lukewarm. The District Education Officer argued that there was no need toôpen more schools in the basti as children were not even attending the ones that already existed. To strengthen their case, Pratyamnaya initiated a study to assess the school requirements in the area and also to identify places where schools could be located. A training programme was started for locally selected women teachers.
A simultaneous effort was to organise women around the issues of thrift and education. Armed with the fact that around 6000 children were out of school and with feedback received from the community, Pratamnaya once again approached the District Collector, who now responded positively and provided slates and notebooks for the three schools.
Continuing dialogue with the district administration led to the development of mutual trust between the NGO and the district government. Consequently, the District Collector requested Pratyamnaya to design a project under the National Child Labour Project (NCLP) of the Government of India that had been announced in mid-I 995. The proposed project was to be run by the district administration and Pratyamnaya in collaboration with each other. Thus began a very effective partnership. -
Prior to the formal launch of the project, Pratyamnaya and Akshara Jyothi Samiti conducted a
door-to-door survey in 800 bastis of Hyderabad
and Secunderabad in October 1995. Eight hundred preraks and 350 non-formal education instructors were involved. The survey was intended both to estimate the number of child workers in the city as well to gain an insight into the factors that constrain their access to eduóation.
The objective of the survey was to assess the child labour problem in the twin cities of Hyderabad and Secunderabad, determine the status of primary education and identify the factors underlying child labour. The findings revealed that around 35,000 children in the age group of 9 toI4 years and 30,000 in the age group of 5 to 8 years were out of school. Among the reasons cited for children not going to school, five related to the schools themselves and one to the general economic situation of the family. Distance
travelled to access the school, insufficient infrastructure in schools, absence of mechanisms to enable school dropouts or those who had never gone to school to bridge the academic gap, migration and difficulties of readmission, and poverty were factors highlighted by the survey. After the survey, 150 slums were selected for the Baljyothi project.
The NCL project was formafly launched in December of 1995, as a registered Society called the Hyderabad District Child Labour Project Society (popularly known as Baljyothi) under the
Basic premises of the project
1. Every child who is out of school is a child labour or potential child labour
2. Most of the child labour are forced to work because there is no school available
3. It is not poverty but the perceptual problem of parents which causes child labour
4. The child labour issue is interconnected to the
education issue and every
Chairmanship of the District Collector. The Society was sanctioned a project for 2,000 children with 40 schools of 50 children each.
The commitment to eliminate child labour and to uphold the right of every child to education is succinctly captured in the stated basic premises of the project itself. However, the sanction of the
- project did not translate into a blind implementation of all the components of the approved scheme. The NCLP provisions were examined in consultation with other NGOs. These consultations stressed the need for two definite components in any child labour project, i.e., prevention and rehabilitation.
Consequently, Baljyothi not only evolved strategies for the education of the working child but also, as part of its preventive programme, focused on children in the 5 to 8 age group, who are out of school and are potential child labour or already working.
Several changes were made in the project provisions based on the consultations and the micro level experiences of Pratyamnaya. The NCLP had a subsidy component of Rs.100 for every child
_______ worker who is studying. There was a further provision of a midday meal. Both the stipend and
midday meal were rejected on the grounds that
• Children have a right to education
• Parents and the community in general should not be bribed to ensure education of children
• Both the subsidy and the midday meal would encourage dropouts among regular school going children to be readmitted as working children.
The special school component in the NCLP is used to both
• run bridge courses for the 10+ working child (either residential or at the school site)
• open community-based schools to reach the 5 tol 0 years age group as part of the strategy to prevent future child labour.
Within the first year, then, the savings accrued as a result of dropping the subsidy and midday meal were used to expand the original sanction of 40 schools to 70 schools (in some areas one
school served two or three adjoining bastis). While the decision to deviate from prescribed norms had the blessing of the district administration, it created several problems for Baljyothi in the first year itself.

III Overcoming obstacles
In any project, delays in fund inflow can be disastrous. Once the project was launched, the demand for schools was overwhelming. As mentioned earlier, a decision was taken to extend the original sanction of schools from 40 to 70 by the end of the first year with the savings accrued by suspending the stipend and midday meal component. The coverage had thus expanded to over 9,000 children as against the sanctioned 2,000.
Procedural delays in terms of release of monies due to questions regarding deviations from the original NCLP guidelines stretched the project to breaking point. In the first year, as against the released Rs. 9 lakh, close to Rs. 35 lakh had been spent. This led not only to the immediate problem of Baljyothi losing credibility with the communities that had responded so positively but also apprehensions about the adverse impact this would have on the attitude of parents towards education or efforts to provide education to children.
Here the versatility of the Project Director in exploring various strategies and mobilising resources from a variety of sources proved effective. Support from UNICEF, the Department of Women and Child Development, Adult Education and the Non-formal Education sähemes of the State Government, and like-minded NGOs was sought to tide over the crisis. Some NGOs took over the running of the schools, in some cases sharing the costs of the school and, in a few, bearing the entire costs of the school.
At the same time, social pressure was brought to bear on the government. Thirty-five thousand postcards were written by children with the help of their teachers to a leading local daily and to the Chief Justice of Andhra Pradesh. The Chief Justice accepted these as a writ petition. Concerned officials of the Education.and Labour Departments were asked by the court to explain the paucity of funds for such an effective project. A ruling was given for the monies to be released within 15 days. This was duly done and the project overcame its most difficult hurdle. Baljyothi’s stand on child labour and the changes made in the project design were all validated.
IV Making education accessible: strategies and outcomes
The principal focus of the project is to make the school accessible. Schools have thus been started in bastis that had no school within a kilometre radius. It would be pertinent to point out here that a major focus of the programme has been to create this access in areas with a high minority population, such as the Old City of Hyderabad. While there have been several initiatives to reach education in minority areas of the city, these have been on a very small scale as part of
NGO efforts. Through Baijyothi, the district administration for the first time has tried to provide educational opportunities to children of minority communities in a planned and structured manner, This is reflected in the fact that a majority of the 150 bastis where he project works have a high minority population. Of the 257 schools the project currently runs, 144 are Urdu medium schools, 12 are Telugu and Urdu medium schools, 100 are Telugu medium and I is a Hindi medium school.
The process of setting up a school begins with project staff going into the slums, talking to basti leaders, women and youth. Several simultaneous steps are initiated in consultation with the community:
• Identifying a woman teacher from within the community
• Identifying a place where the school could be located
• Initiating a process for the formation of a mother’s committee/school education committee
The selected teacher then begins to establish rapport with the community and make a list of out- of-school children and those who are employed. This process of familiárisation is crucial, particularly in the urban context where communities are isolated and alienated from each other. The personal contact of the teacher with parents and basti leaders is seen as a vital element in enabling a decision to send children to school.
The process of finding space for a school has in some bastis resulted in a very interesting dialogue with and mobilisation of the community. Efforts are made to identify community halls or government buildings where schools could start. Where this is not possible, houses are rented on reasonable rates. In the Old City of Hyderabad, where the project works in settled bastis, the schools are located in rented spaces. Often these are small, cramped premises overflowing with kids. A few lucky ones manage to find a house with a small yard that serves as a playground. In other areas, nearby parks and open spaces are occasionally used for children to play in.
In the newer bastis like Filmnagar that nestles in Jubilee Hills, one of the more posh localities of
Hyderabad, the issue of finding space for a school has taken on new dimensions. Most of the
‘ bastis here have cropped up on government land and consIst mainly of workers engaged in the
burgeoning construction business of Jubilee Hills. In many places, in consultation with and the
active support of the community, open government lands were identified and school buildings
‘ with three to four rooms built. In a few cases, where local land-grabbers controlled the open
spaces, land was forcibly occupied with the help of the police, and the right of the community
established through official sanction by the District Collector. There are several cases where the

land-shark, after a change of heart, has himself contributed substantiafly to the school building fund. It must also be noted that in these areas, funds for the construction of school buildings have also been accessed from various government programmes, such as Prajala Vaddaku Palana and the Janmabhoomi programme, once again highlighting the fact that the project is at all times open to accessing resources from a variety of sources. The money set aside for rent in the NCLP is also used as an additional resource for building construction.
To date, 184 schools are located in rented premises, 34 in community halls, while 39 have been built with Baljyothi funds. It needs to be pointed out, however, that even schools where new buildings have been constructed or rented and which have some amount of space for children to play in, little attention has been paid to making the playground usable.
An interesting fall-out of all this has been the parallel effort of basti dwellers to gain rights of occupancy to the basti they live in. In one of the newer bastis that was visited, the families were very keen to support the starting of a school, as this was seen as giving legitimacy to their occupancy rights. At the same time, in the Old City, the project is inundated with requests for schools from different areas where the initiative is coming from local youth and community leaders. Young men and women are in some cases voluntarily conducting surveys before making such a request. This, perhaps, is the best validation the project could receive.
Multiple strategies are used to bring children,
especially girls, into schools:
• Camps providing bridge courses for older (10+) children, preparing them to enter formal schools and government hostels. Bridge courses at the site of the school to enable older children to overcome the academic gap.
• For potential child labour in the age group 5 to 8 years, schools are opened in the r neighbourhood itself.
For domestic workers and street children, contact centres provide the initial step towards formal schooling. This is being explored through networking with other NGOs working in the area.
A more recent development has been to activate existing government schools by recruiting additional parateachers through the project, with Baljyothi supervisors providing the interface between the school and the community.
While MV Foundation shares the Baljyothi perspective and stand on child labour and child labour education, there are some differences in the strategies adopted. In MVF, mainstreaming is through bridge courses and camps into government schools. In Baijyothi, an added dimension is the opening of schools in unserved neighbourhoods, with the long-term objective of having these become government schools to ensure access to primary education in the bastis themselves.
As is evident from Figure 1, at all stages the focus is on formal schooling and on accessing infrastructure facilities like hostels provided by the social welfare department.
The residential education camp
Baljyothi runs residential education camps as a bridge course for children above the age of 10 to enable those who cannot be admitted directly into school. These are children working in mechanic shops, construction sites, as helpers in small teashops, and as domestic labour.
The camp duration is from six months to one year. The first residential camp was started in March 1996 in a DIET building. A camp was planned with 500 children in mind. On the first day, 850 children turned up. Some sifting took place. All children below the age of 9 years were sent back to their bastis and admitted in a Baljyothi school. The camp stabilised with around 550 children. The camp closed formally in October 1996, After the camp the children were admitted in Baijyothi I government schools and social welfare hostels.
Baljyothi also assisted in a camp for 300 children run under the Child and Police programme.
For the past two years, Baljyothi has been running the camp with 100 girls in each batch in collaboration with the Department of Women and Child using a government working women’s hostel. Expenditure incurred on maintenance, teachers’ salaries and learning materials is borne by Baljyothi. The children are either sent into government hostels or prepared to take the class VII board exams.
The residential camp continues to be an effective strategy for mainstreaming older children.
V Baijyothi community schools
A word about the special schools is in order. The NCLP had originally conceived the special schools as residential/part-time schools for child labour as defined in the Act. In Baljyothi, these
are run as regular schools from 9.00 am. to 3.30 p.m. Schools are set up in areas where children do not have a government school within a one kilometre radius. The majority of children who come here enrol for the first time. Each school has a locally selected teacher and an ayah. All of them have a curriculum, academic schedule and testing system similar to that of government schools. Children have monthly unit tests, quarterly and half-yearly exams, followed by an annual exam. In the initial phase, test papers were set by Baljyothi. Gradually, however, these were replaced with pre-set question papers procured from a known agency.
The use of the mainstream educational curriculum with all its drawbacks has not been a deterrent in enrolling and retaining children in school. This points to high levels of community mobilisation and teacher commitment and accountability.
VI Bridge courses
For older children in the age group 9 to 14 years, comprising working children and school dropouts, residential camps have proved to be an effective strategy. Camps are conducted both
_______ independently and in collaboration with the Department of Women and Child Development, through participation in the Back to School programme of the Social Welfare Department and the Child and Police (CAP) programme of the Police Department. At the camp, which extends from six months to a year, children are given intensive coaching to reach an academic level suitable to their age group, i.e., Class IV or V. After completion of the bridge course, the children are either sent to government hostels or admitted to schools near their homes
As a corollary to creating access through opening of schools, strengthening
existing government schools has gradually gained momentum. In the Kishanganj a area where Baljyothi was running two schools, there is the Daeechi Baaware High
School, with a two-storey building and a very low enrolment rate. The project decided to close its own schools and instead mobilise children in the nearby areas to go to the government school. Thus a school that was almost defunct with an enrolment of a paltry 80 students now has an enrolment of 1,500 children as a result of Baljyothi’s community mobilisation intervention. Since the number of government teachers posted here are insufficient now that the enrolments have shot up, the project has placed four of its own teachers in the school. In addition, the Project Supervisor monitors the school on a regular basis.
VII Reaching out to the unreached
A beginning has been made to address the problems of domestic child labour and street children. In order to aid the rehabilitation of domestic child labour, a sample survey was conducted in December 1998. The survey covered 24 apartments in Borabanda basti and identified 72 domestic child workers, 35 of whom were mainstreamed through parental counselling and bridge courses. This small initiative led to the identification of around 2,000 domestic child labour. Starting schools and bridge courses at the community level and seeking admission into social welfare hostels are some of the strategies being used for rehabilitation.
In 1999, the project formally adopted a government orphanage. It also set up contact centres for street children. These centres are located in three of the city’s railway stations, two parks, two bus stations and three major temples. They serve as contact and motivation points. Each centre is run by a team comprising a supervisor, two community organisers and two teachers, all of whom work on a flexible time schedule.
During field visits it was clear that access, particularly for girls in minority pockets, had indeed been generated -- especially at Class t and II levels. In all the schools visited, Class I was overflowing with children. Since many of the children often bring their younger siblings with them,
informal pre-schools were also being run. In all cases, however, the numbers decreased in the higher classes. It is significant to note that several girls were still enrolled in the higher classes. The sharp drop in the numbers, often in Classes Ill to V, can be attributed to families moving out of the bastis and children being moved into nearby government or private schools -- several of which cropped up during the project period -- once the parents are convinced of the validity of education.
— This is a grey area and is acknowledged and recognised as such: the project has not systematically tracked children who enter Class I. Though data is apparently being maintained at the community level by the community organiser and community-based committees, a lot more needs to be done to use this data effectively both to track out-of-school children and those who have dropped out after Classes I and II, and to motivate and mobilise the concerned parents to ensure that children do not lose their opportunities for education.
There are some positive trends evident. In Borabanda basti, where the idea of Baljyothi was lIiiii developed, of the 6,000 children identified as out-of-school children, only 200 in the older age
group still remain out of school. The rest are either in Baijyothi schools or have been mobilised to join private or government schools in the area.
In Sriramnagar basti, the community organiser reported that only 30 of the 600 children identified in 1996 are out of school. The school had run bridge courses for an additional three hours -- from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. in the evenings. Adolescents in the age group of 13 to 20 years used to attend bridge classes. In 1998, 38 who were part of the bridge courses took the Class VII board exam and 34 passed. The bridge courses have been discontinued since the school now focuses on only Classes I to V.
Azma Begum from this basti is an inspiring example of where an opportunity can lead.
Azma belongs to a poor family of the basti. The eldest child, she has four brothers and two sisters. Her father, who has studied up to Class VII, works occasionally and her mother is chronically ill. Azma and her sisters make paper bags that they sell for Rs. 10/kg. Earlier they used to get 60 paise for the same amount. Together, the sisters make 10 kg of bags a day. One of her brothers assists in a carpentry shop and earns about Rs.30 to Rs.40 a week, but this is not assured at all times.
When the Baljyothi project started, the local teacher who is now the community organiser there, motivated the family and Azma to join the school in 1996. Azma had been taught by her father to read and write Urdu but had never attended school. Sixteen-year-old Azma and her siblings, who also joined school, continued to work after school hours, often beyond 10 p.m., to finish their quota of 10 kg paper bags every day.
Azma, a regular student, attended the bridge courses offered by Baljyothi and successfully passed the Class VII board exams in 1999. Between 1998 and 2000, she continued to study in the evenings with the help of the community organiser and her daughter. Azma and the community organiser shared a dream — that one day, Azma would be a teacher. In August 2000, Azma took the qualifying exam for the Bachelor’s course in Urdu of the Maulana Azad Open University and passed. Baljyothi has agreed to pay her admission and other fees. Azma is now eagerly awaiting her learning materials and looking ahead to completing her B,A. and realising her dream of becoming a teacher.
The project is now in the process of collating its database to track the movement of children from class to class, not only through the Baijyothi schools but also through other schools to which they may have shifted.
Recognising that in the long run, the Baljyothi bridge courses would need to be part of the mainstream, the project has successfully lobbied the Education Department to issue an order permitting the admission of NCLP schoolchildren into regular government schools after an admission test covering the syllabus of the immediate lower level and subject to fulfilment of required criteria, such as age, etc.
In a recent development at the end of 2000, 70 Baljyothi schools were taken over by the government and 250 government teachers posted to them. This takeover is being viewed as a
ui long-term strategy to sustain the momentum generated by the project and to move in the direction of Universalisation of Elementary Education (UEE). The move, however, has given rise to several questions, such as what happens to the teachers recruited by the project (see sections on Teachers and Project Management).
A quick comparison with other NCLP projects in the state highlights the achievements of
Baljyothi. There are 945 schools sanctioned under NCLP in all the 23 districts of the state. However, Baljyothi is the only project to have exceeded its targets both in terms of number of schools opened and number of children covered. This, perhaps, is a result of several factors like
• the wider definition of child labour that informs Baljyothi’s work
• the multiple strategies adopted
• the fact that unlike other NCLP projects, Baljyothi is the result of an effective partnership between the government and an NGO
Since the project is committed to the idea of mainstreaming, little direct focus is given to
curriculum development and pedagogy. Project officials are unabashed about this stand. As the Project Director sees it, Baljyothi is all about educational activism: mobilising communities, developing community leadership, enabling educational access of children, tapping government resources for the schools, and developing partnerships with other like-minded NGOs to achieve UEE. This is not surprising, given the overall approach to the issue of child labour education.
VIII Children and the community
While looking at the profile of the children the project has reached, it would be useful to recall that Baljyothi offers formal schooling from 9 in the morning until 3.30 in the afternoon. It does not run any non-formal school, not even for a couple of hours in the evening.
The profile of the children varies depending on which basti the project is working in. in the Filmnagar bastis of Jubilee Hills, for instance, children belong to families of construction site workers and often are engaged in domestic labour. In these bastis, Ba has been successful in drawing children out of casual construction and domestic work into schools.
In the Old City, children come from families engaged in home-based activities like making bangles, safety pins or agarbattis, embroidering, and packing chocolates. All these activities are usually performed by girls who are roped into them at a very early age. Boys are sent out to work in bakeries, as apprentices in carpentry or mechanic shops or as vendors.

School and work — striking a balance?
Interactions with children in Class IV in a school in the Old City showed that
while the children all attended school from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., they continued to
be engaged in work after school. The children were clear about the necessity
to work, either outside or in the home, assisting in their household’s chosen economic activity. All were emphatic in their claim that they do manage to set
aside some time for homework. A discussion on how much each makes for
specific kinds of work revealed that the going rate for making agarbattis is Rs.8/kg; for safety pins, it is Rs.6Ikg; chocolate packing Rs.7Ikg; rubber bands
Rs.3Ikg; lac bangles Rs.1O/dozen; reworking old mattresses Rs.2/day for three hours of work after school while selling chana or mithai for about five hours
fetched them Rs.1O/day.
The significant achievement of Baljyothi in this context has been to establish
the right of the child to formal schooling. Thorny issues like overload of work,
. consequent stress and lack of leisure time, however, remain. It is not clear how
the project is addressing these.
Community mobilisation and involvement of women and parents has been a key factor in grounding the Baljyothi project. The emphasis from the beginning has been on community-owned initiatives and community-controlled development, with Baljyothi playing a catalyst role. Much
effort has gone into establishing a convergence between the school and the community. This has been achieved through various means:
. Intensive interactions and discussions with the community in the project launch phase
• Involving local youth and leaders in educational surveys and in identifying children who are out of school
• Involving the community in selecting teachers from within the community for the Baljyothi schools
• Ensuring community involvement by encouraging their participation in the School Education Committees and Mothers’ Committees. While very proactive in the early stages of the programme, these committees have tended to slide into a routine meeting activity, especially in neighbourhoods where the project has been working for nearly five years. Unfortunately, rio clear strategies have been evolved to strengthen the capacities of a communities/committees to play a proactive role
• Selecting local, educated young women as teachers through a community consultative process, thereby ensuring a direct link with the community and families and fostering a feeling of trust in the school
• Eliciting community support and contributions for developing infrastructure or for bargaining with the local elected representatives and government. This latter strategy has enabled the community to take on a leadership role in the cause of education. Baijyothi has been particularly successful in negotiating with local Land-sharks, arrack contractors and businessmen by bringing social pressure on them to participate in the community educational agenda.
An important feature of the community mobilisation efforts has been enabling different community * groups to address related livelihood concerns and issues. Baljyothi, with its added advantage of
being perceived as part of the district administration, has enabled community groups to demand improvement in civic amenities like water, electricity, roads and ration cards. Thrift initiatives among the communities have established linkages with the Podupu Jyothi scheme and the Scheduled Caste Corporation for credit. Adolescent girls and mothers have been provided with vocational training in such activities as tailoring and envelope and folder making. These additional dimensions of community mobilisation have lent greater legitimacy and sense of community ownership to the project’s educational agenda.
Community perceptions of Baljyothi indicate the community’s growing ownership of the education agenda. As a mothers’ group put it:
‘This school is different. We know the teachers. We are sure they will take proper care of our children. If our child misses school even for a day, the teacher promptly comes home to find out the reason. Children cannot dodge going to school. Earlier, we used to think our children are going to the government school while in actuality they would leave the house, roam, play the whole day and come home in the evening. We never knew what was happening to our child’s education. Now we mothers are involved in the school management. So we know what is happening at the school.’
Some people view Baljyothi not as a short-term project but as an arm of the government itself, a view that is shared by the project staff. In a recent TV programme ‘Dial your Chief Minister, a community leader called in with a complaint against the Baijyothi Project Director for not opening a school in his locality despite a request for one by his community. Ba response has been to explore the possibility of opening a school in the complainant’s locality.
IX Teachers
At present, there are 675 teachers on the rolls of Baljyothi. There are several types of teachers:
teachers who run the residential camps, teachers who have been placed in government schools
or Baljyothi schools to run bridge courses for older children, teachers placed in Government Social Welfare hostels to provide ongoing academic support to children mainstreamed into the hostels. And there are those who run the locality-based schools. Teachers in these latterschools
are women living in the basti the particular school serves. All of them have a minimum educational certification of Class X and are paid a salary ranging from Rs. 800 to Rs. 1,000 per month. Since these teachers live in the neighbourhood, they only have to walk to school. Their expenditure on travel is therefore minimal.
In the initial phase, women who had participated in the TLCs, or served as Non-formal Education (NFE) instructors, or women who were just enthusiastic but armed with the requisite minimum qualification, were selected. As the project matured, several women who had studied up to the intermediate level also began to be recruited. As has already been indicated, teachers are selected through a community consultative process. There are several teachers who have gone up the ladder to become community organisers after two to three years. This has created opportunities for other young women to be trained as teachers.
Once selected, the women, along with other project staff, undergo an eight-day residential
training programme. Two major eight-day residential trainings were conducted in December 1995 and January 1996 for four batches of 60 teachers each. While the first phase dealt with general perspectives and philosophy of the project, the second phase focused on teaching methodologies.
However, training of teachers and project staff has undergone considerable change since then. While in the initial phase, the training was more structured and intensive, as the project has grown and matured, a lot of teacher training has become hands-on and is provided in the c’assroom itse’f, with older teachers and supervisory staff providing academic support and inputs. Since the community organisers and supervisors frequently visit the schools on a rotational basis, they too are expected to provide academic support in the classroom. It is difficult, however, to assess how effective these daily interactions have been for the teachers concerned.
Initially, trainers were drawn from among NGO staff -- particularly those from NGOs like MVF and Pratyamnaya - with considerable field and training experience. Within the project, one programme officer is exclusively in charge of training. According to the training coordinator, the focus of the training derives from the project’s emphasis on educational activism. Discussions and exercises in the early phase centred on the following issues:
• Developing the teachers’ perspectives and sensitivity to issues of child labour
• Understanding the educational scenario and system and locating the Baljyothi project within this context
• Different programmes child labour and education
• Child psychology
• Addressing the behavioural aspects of teachers to enable them to be sensitive communicators both with the community and children
• Accountability to the children and the community
• Understanding the difference between examination taking and learning levels
• How to conduct surveys
• Communication skills
• How to teach Class IV mathematics
• How to teach language using the word and sentence method
• Teaching English in Class I through identification of alphabets, flowers, fruits, days of the month
• How to prepare lesson plans
• How to use local resources for teaching the EVS syllabus for Classes I and II
• How to report children’s progress levels
• The differences between a regular school and bridge courses offered in the residential camps.
Discussions and observations at the school suggest that teachers have a fairly good understanding of the overall objective of the project. They are clear on issues of child labour and are convinced that formal schooling is the only effective strategy to be followed. In the classrooms, however, there is little evidence of creativity in teaching the children. Though several teachers are familiar with the joyful’leaming methodologies, lack of space in the classroom, the compulsion for several different classes to share the same space, lack of a conducive environment where outdoor learning could take place — have all contributed to making teaching in Ba schools no different from that in government schools.
On the positive side is the teacher’s perception and acknowledgment of her roles as mobiliser, mentor and teacher within the community. This is evident from the regular attendance of enrolled children. Teachers are keenly aware of the number of children who remain absent, the need to
IUm persuade parents to send their children to school, and the need to be regular in their teaching. However, these latter aspects have tended to overshadow the concern with quality of education being provided.
Training is an area of tremendous concern right now. The trainers and community organisers were expected to provide academic support to the teacher and even to take over teaching when the teacher is absent. While they do provide continuity in teaching when a teacher is absent, their role has gradually become more of a monitoring one -- checking the attendance regularity of the
— teacher and talking to the community rather than providing academic support,
As already indicated, teachers who were recruited after the first two or three years have not really received any intensive, structured training. The Project Director is sharply aware of this lacuna
IlUi and recognises that older teachers need fresh inputs and the newer recruits need intensive training. This is an area of growing concern in the project. One of the reasons cited for being unable to keep the training on par is the lack of good training groups/institutions that can provide
_ the required inputs on an ongoing basis.
Given the recent entry of 250 govemment teachers as key players in the 70 Baljyothi schools taken over by the government, it is yet to be seen what shape the training and perspective building of these teachers will take. No clear plan has evolved as yet.
_____
Project management and linkages with the Government and
NGOs
There are major differences between the Baljyothi project and other NCLP projects in the state. The Baljyothi project is implemented through a registered society, with the project director and staff recruited from outside the government. The NCLP projects in the other districts have a project director deputed from the government, and the project itself is part of the district administration. In many cases, the NCLP project is an additional charge for the project director. Further, the project is implemented through a grant-in-aid to NGOs and the project office essentially functions as a clearinghouse for financial sanctions. There is little direct interaction between the project and its NGO partners nor is there any close monitoring.
The Baijyothi management structure, on the other hand, reveals a vibrant partnership between the NGO and the government. This is yet another example of a government sponsored organisation outside but not quite divorced from the governmental structure. We have many examples of such partnerships across the country (for instance, the Mahila Samakhya Societies in various states). As mentioned earlier, Pratyamnaya, an NGO, runs the Baljyothi project in collaboration with the District Collectorate. The project is registered under the Societies Act and retains a strong governmental linkage through the District Collector. The Magistrate of Hyderabad district is the Chairman of the Society. Earmarking the positions of Vice-Chairperson and Project Director for persons drawn from the NGO sector ensures NGO presence in key decision-making positions. The Secretary of Pratyamnaya is the Project Director. By and large, the staff are deputed from Pratyamnayà, directly recruited or, as in the case of teachers, recruited from within the community. There have been instances, however, of some government schoolteachers and staff of the Akshara Jyothi Samiti also working on deputation. All staff, except those on deputation, are on time-bound contracts with fixed emoluments. As the Figure 2 suggests, the project provides for close and frequent interaction between supervisors, community organisers and teachers. The school is the site of these interactions. Since all staff up to the level of the community organiser have to sign out from the office at the end of the day, there are opportunities for formal as well as informal interactions with programme and field officers as well as the Project Director. It should be noted that all teachers and community organisers are women.
The present staff position is as follows:
• Two programme officers for the two divisions of Hyderabad and Secunderabad. One of them
was on deputation from the Education Department and this post is currently vacant. —
• Two programme officers who have been directly recruited on a contract basis for the two divisions.
a Three field coordinators/officers with specific responsibility for three programmes: follow-up at the hostels, training, and literacy.
• Sixteen supervisors, one for each mandal (each mandal has around 28 wards). They look after 10 to 15 schools and visit two to three schools a day.
• Fourteen community organisers (in Amberpet, Borabanda, Filmnagar and the Old City). Each community organiser is responsible for five schools. She visits two schools a day.

An important feature of the project is its working style. Since almost all staff are from outside the government, their working style is imbued with a sense of informality and a non-hierarchical ethos. This is all the more striking since the office is located within the premises of the District Collectorate. The Project Director has not allowed himself to be hampered by procedures and rules, and is very prompt in taking decisions. While in the initial phase, the presence of the Project Director was critical for even the smallest of decisions, the programme and field officers now frequently take decisions on their own.
uuI Key personnel like the Project Director, programme officers and coordinators have extensive experience in engaging with issues of child labour and education, many of them having cut their teeth in MV Foundation. This experience reflects itself in the clarity of project objectives and the sense of mission they bring to their work.
Since the project office is located within the premises of the District Collectorate, both physically and notionally it presents itself as an adjunct and supporting component of the district administration. Its interventions gain additional legitimacy because of its direct linkage to the District Collector. Recently, this linkage was further strengthened when the Project Director was
1uII nominated as the nodal officer for some of the municipal wards under the Janmabhoomi programme. However, this has proved to be both a positive factor and a constraint on the functioning of the project. Except for the teachers, Baljyothi staff, like all other government staff, are co-opted for various other government works like flood relief, the regular Janmabhoomi programmes and other district administration campaigns.
IIII The positive fall-out has been that, because of the Project Director’s appointment as nodal officer, the community groups in bastis under the Baljyothi project are able to directly tap the various resources and government schemes through the Janmabhoomi programme. A case in point is the newly announced Deepam scheme for getting cooking gas connections. Women’s groups from the project bastis have been active in applying for and getting these connections. This crucial interface with other development programmes of the government has enabled the project to move parents and communities to support and further the cause of children’s education.
As mentioned several times, a key feature of the project is its ability to link up with various
departments and programmes to raise resources for the project, utilise other programmes to
further the goals of Baljyothi, as well as strengthen departments like the Education Department
through strengthening government schools. In an effort to plug the dropout rates in localities
served by government schools, the project has undertaken community awareness campaigns.

When the district administration started the NFE (Non-formal Education) programme in the city, two projects of 200 schools were sanctioned to BaI.iy’othi in 1996. Since Baljyothi is opposed to non-formal schooling, these were also run as full-time schools. As part of the Back to School programme, Baljyothi made use of hostels under the Social Welfare Department to accommodate the mobilised children. In addition, it appointed teachers especially to ensure follow-up with the children at the site of the hostel. The project has such teachers in all the Social Welfare hostels in the city. Nearly 4,000 children were mainstreamed through the Back to School programme. Baljyothi also admitted 300 girl child workers into Girl Child Rehabilitation Camps organised by the AP Women’s Finance Corporation of the Department of Women and Child Development over a three-year period.
The project also actively coordinates with the Department of Labour in implementing the Child Labour Act. Baljyothi has coordinated enforcement drives and surveys, during which the project
supervisors and teachers play the role of labour inspectors and are recognised as such by the
— community.
In a recent development, Baljyothi has been given the responsibility to conduct an educational
— survey of Hyderabad district under the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan programme of the Government of India.
The project actively seeks to establish partnerships with NGOs in the city to develop a forum to
_______ address the daunting task of bringing over one takh child labour into schools as well as to actually take over the running of schools in some areas. When, in the early stages, the project was
— strapped for funds, NGOs were requested to take over the running of schools and, in some cases, to share in the costs of the school.
S
In some areas, the project has successfully handed over the schools to an NGO. People’s Initiative Network (PIN), which works io the Chaderghat area, has taken over 17 schools started by Baljyothi. These schools are funded, managed and monitored by PIN. Another NGO, Krushi, which works with street children, runs five schools covering over 1,000 children with partial funding from Baljyothi. Over eight NGOs are in partnership with• the project and run about 30 schools.
As of now, all these are informal partnerships. There is a proposal, however, to formalise such ______ involvement through an MOU between the project and the participating NGO. The participating
NGOs welcome this move, as it would legitimise their role within the project and free them from dependency on individual whims and attitudes.
______
XI Strategies for the future
At the present juncture the project is grappling with issues of sustainability beyond the project
period:
• The sustainability of the schools already opened
• Ensuring quality education through sustained teacher training
• The future of teachers and other project staff
• Strengthening community groups to continue to play a proactive role vis a vis the school
• Retaining momentum in addressing the issue of child labour education in the city
• Putting in place mechanisms to ensure that child labour education is addressed on scale across the city
• Creating a forum of concerned organisations and individuals that would lobby for policy changes and evolve effective strategies for both the government and NGOs.
One of the strategies being considered is to lobby with the government to have all Baljyothi schools recognised as government schools. As the Project Director unequivocally states, all Baljyothi schools are transitional, preparing the ground for the government to step in and fulfil its constitutional responsibility and commitment. As mentioned earlier, some schools have been already taken over by the government. Several reservations have been expressed in this regard. All Baljyothi schools cannot be automatically converted into government schools, as in some cases the population being served is small or transient. Some rationale in locating schools for conversion would therefore need to be developed. This process has already begun, in the sense that the project itself has collapsed some schools into one that can serve several nearby and small habitations.
The issue of teachers who have been recruited is of greater concern. The experience of other NGOs has shown that whenever parateachers are considered for absorption into the government system, several problems arise. Often the teachers’ qualifications do not match the requirements laid down by the government. Further, the prospect of a permanent job involves factors such as contacts and political pressure that govern the selection of candidates. The latter can sway even school committees and community groups, who are quickly persuaded to overlook the dedicated service of their community teachers. As of now, it is unclear what the project is doing about these issues. In the 70 schools taken over by the government, newly recruited government teachers have been appointed, displacing the Baijyothi teachers. In the interim, the project proposes to

— utiUse this personnel in the Sarva Shiksha Educational survey. This, however, can only serve as a short-term solution to the problem.
The long-term strategy of creating a citywide forum to address the issue of child labour education and possibly to serve as a think-tank for the government seems more hopeful. Forty-seven NGOs working with disadvantaged children have come together in a forum called Child Education Network (CEDNET). A city-level coordination committee has been formed with representatives from various government departments and 10 NGOs under the chairmanship of the District
— Collector. Baijyothi has taken the lead to make this network operational.
The network has the twin objectives of ‘bringing all children into full-time schools and improving the quality of education and to make education accessible to all children.’ A broad action plan has
I been worked out to address the needs of street children, domestic child labour, child labour in shops and establishments, children with special needs, children in sex trade and children of sex
workers; as well as to strengthen and to improve ‘the educational system. NGOs have identified specific areas of focus based on their experience and expertise. Some preliminary meetings have already been held and strategies for different groups have been worked out.
This network is what Baljyothi visualises as a logical conclusion to its efforts to build partnerships between government and civil society to tackle the issue of child labour education on a citywide scale. In a recent development, the Ministry of Human Resource Development has advised the State Education Department to use the citywide action plan developed by the network as the basis for planning educational strategies for Hyderabad district.
XII Learnrngs from the Baijyothi experience
Baljyothi has clearly challenged the traditional approach of providing incentives as a strategy to establish the right of a child to education. The project experience shows that intensive community mobilisation and conscientisation positively impacts children’s education. Parents, when convinced, do not need the crutch of an incentive to send their children to full-time school. Further, the project has enabled communities to play a catalytic role in ensuring schooling in their areas. What has also been clearly shown is the effective mobilisation of minority communities that had been generally perceived as difficult to reach.
• The project further validates the strategy of recruiting local teachers as a mechanism to make the school effective, especially in minority areas.
• By opening schools in areas that were not being served, the project has effectively set in place mechanisms to prevent the creation of new child labour. It may be noted that while children continue to work after school in some areas, the right of the child to a full day at school has clearly been established. The use of multiple strategies has enabled the project to reach children in diverse age groups.
The project experience also highlights an oft seen problem of successful mobilisation strategies not being equally matched by concerted and sustained initiatives to improve quality of education, especially in programmes that have gone to scale. This underlines the need for more careful planning and sourcing of expertise to meet the requirements of providing quality education.
• The Baljyothi experience affords an excellent example of how clearly stated commitments and objectives enable a project to negotiate from a position of strength while participating in other programmes or linking up with various government departments. The project did not deviate from its position on child labour nor did it compromise its commitment to mainstream child labour into formal education.
• The management structure of the project has demonstrated that it is possible to establish a vibrant partnership between an NGO and the government when both are committed to a common objective. Baijyothi was facilitated by a policy framework that was committed to children’s education as well as to addressing the issue of child labour. At the same time, the experience highlights the crucial role of individual agency, both on the part of Pratyamnaya and the government. Successive Collectors have demonstrated a very high sense of ownership of the project objectives and have protected the autonomous functioning of Baijyothi. From the beginning, Pratyamnaya recognised the need for regular interaction and advocacy with the government backed by solid, field-level feedback. This has enabled Baljyothi to demand flexibility in functioning as well as to work towards its long-term strategy of facilitating the government takeover of the project’s schools and educational agenda.