IPER Holiday School ---- Child Workers’ Own School
Child labour remains one of the most pressing and neglected human rights issue of our times. It is one of the principal causes of child abuse and exploitation in our country, infringing on the basic rights of children, like education, health care, nutrition, freedom from exploitation and recreation. These children are denied of opportunities and facilities which other children from economically better off strata get. IPER firmly believes that every child has the right to receive the vital services irrespective of the status or income group she or he belongs to.

With this aim in view IPER, in 1983, with the aid from Ministry of Labour, Government. of India initiated an action-oriented programme called “IPER Holiday Schools for Child Workers” to provide the child workers in the city of Calcutta with the facilities and rights denied to them. Classes were held on Saturday afternoons and Sunday mornings in the premises of the public and municipal schools which usually remain closed over the weekends.

The curriculum of the Holiday School included the subjects taught at the primary level of the formal schools such as Language, Arithmetic, Nature Study, History and Geography. The medium of teaching was both Bengali and Hindi. The children were taught drawing, painting and handicrafts for developing their creative talent. Medical check-up of the children was carried out regularly and treatment was given to the ailing ones. Medicines and supportive diets were given free of cost. A supplementary feeding programme was also carried out. There were 36 such Holiday schools catering to more than 2000 child workers each year from 1983 to 1996.

Late Afternoon Schools for Street and Working Children
Since 1988 IPER has also been running a number of educational centres which function in the late afternoon. These schools are targetted at those street children and working children who work part-time like vendors and ragpickers and are free to attend in the late afternoon.

IPER Habilitation Centre for the Mentally Challenged

In 1987 IPER Habilitation Centre was set up for children who for various reasons were mentally challenged and could not be taught in conventional schools or by traditional methods. This Centre catered to the needs of those mentally challenged children who were educable. The main aim was to develop effective methods of teaching through creative activities. As a part of the habilitation programme selected children were given vocational training so that they could be self-reliant in life. Speech therapy and behavioural therapy were other essential components as also family counselling.

Most of the children could write sentences and calculate money. Some of them had reached the level of primary education. They could follow those directions which were important in daily life. The children were taught daily activities of life like simple cooking, making beds, washing, folding, ironing clothes, laying the table and so on. The students participated regularly in competitions such as the National Meet of the Special Olympics, talent shows where they presented mime, dramas, music and dance items. This center presently works as referral center and carries out out-reach awareness programmes jointly with IICP.

International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC)
IPER worked with ILO in two programmes during the tenure of IPEC in the early 90s. One programme had as its focus running of special schools for the child labours and bettering their living and working conditions and the other in preventing child employment by making a massive drive for putting the children in the schools and ensuring that the children are retained there. For both the programmes intensive work was done with the parents and the employers to commit them to end child labour.

For this the social workers of IPER identified and established contact with 1000 employers in order to motivate them to stop employing children. Street corner meetings were arranged to generate awareness against the evil effects of child labour among the employers and people in general. Discussion meets were arranged for university and college students, journalists, teachers and others. Programme was developed to mobilise public opinion and form active intervention groups to fight child labour. Besides schooling, interventions were made to prevent them from joining the labour market by constant monitoring in the area selected for the work. Special focus was on the girls who were the most neglected and vulnerable amongst child workers.

Convention on the Rights of the Child & IPER

It was as early as 1994 two years after India signed the first legal document on rights of the children that with the cooperation of 45 NGOs IPER observed a ‘Child Rights Week’ which ended with a rally of 10,000 children and adults walking for the rights of the children. It was in 1994 again that an NGO report on the Rights of the Child was developed in a Two-day Workshop organized by IPER.

It was an experiment on the assertion of the children’s rights by the children themselves. In November 1995, 30 children belonging to the Bishnupur Block II in South Parganas, West Bengal held the first ever Shishu Panchayat in India which was the first of its kind in India if not in Asia. This unique session of the Children’s own Civil Administrative Body was attended by many eminent people of the locality, UNICEF officials and NGO representatives from different states and members of the press and the electronic media. IPER facilitated not only the planning and implementation of the programme but was instrumental to the holding of the Shishu Panchayat Session. The idea of holding this was to provide the children a platform from where they could voice their own views and exercise their rights.

The programme consisted of three phases. In the first phase IPER facilitated a three day orientation programme for the children. The objective of this was to identify and prioritise their needs. In the second phase the children were encouraged to assess the situation of the children in their own villages. They collected information on the basic facilities available in the villages like provision of health centres, water supply, availability of schools and playgrounds and so on. In the third and final phase IPER helped the children to form the Shishu Panchayat. The children elected the president and other members of the body. On the final day the children presented their views and submitted a Charter of Demand by the children to the President of the Zilla Parishad as well to the Panchayat Minister of the State.

Inspired by the success of Shishu Panchayat IPER conducted an intensive programme of awareness on the Convention of the Rights of the Child for children of 35 schools both formal and non-formal in the city of Kolkata. Nearly 1000 children were involved in the programme where they learnt about their rights and also explored the areas where they were denied of those rights. The objective of the programme was to make the children thoroughly acquainted with their rights and finally to draw up a programme whereby they would be assured of enjoying them. As an extension of the plan to ensure children’s participation as a right a programme on Children’s Borough Council was developed. The child members of the Borough Councils finally met the Mayor of Kolkata to ensure children’s participation with co-operation from their adult counterparts in the activities of the Kolkata Municipal Corporation. This meeting with the Mayor too was facilitated by IPER.

Development of Curricular Materials for Street Children

IPER for a long time is working with the deprived children and the major intervention that it makes in the life of the child is through education. For this purpose a set of systematic and well-planned learning materials suitable for street and working children was developed. This has gone through several changes and modifications after required feedback from the children and teachers was incorporated in the materials.

This led IPER to take up a project in collaboration with CLPOA on the Development of Curricular Materials for the street children. This project was started in November 1999 and the materials for the four classes at the primary stage have been developed in consultation with 50 NGOs. The try-out of the material on suitably selected sample groups along with required training of the street educators too has been completed.

ChildWatch – A Programme on Child Protection

IPER during its long association with deprived children found many children who were living in high-risk situations and needed immediate support to develop in a healthy manner. They needed vital services for their proper growth. These high-risk children were:

These children were often malnourished, as both the quality and quantity of food was insufficient; they were shelter-less without a roof over their heads and slept on the open pavements; illiterate since they were not in school and got no health care when ill as there was no money for their treatment.

It is for these children “in crisis” that ChildWatch programme was designed. It is a multi-dimensional programme aimed to provide the children their essential rights for development such as education, nutrition, health care and recreation. It is a programme for family integration too and allows the child to grow in a family setting be it biological or foster, as against institutions, and be a part of society to which she or he belongs. Initially supported by UNICEF it has graduated into IPER’s Programme for Child Protection. It has several components for different target groups like the child, the family and the community.

For the children the activities taken up are:

No child can be helped unless the family is supportive to the child. So families are also guided for the purpose and parents meeting are held weekly to discuss issues of interest and relevance to them. They are also given counselling as and when situation demands. Activities with the community mainly concentrated on the awareness generation and information sharing with the key persons in the community.

Development of Materials for Culture & Value Education & Training of Teachers

In conformity with the National Policy of Education (1986) IPER submitted a Value Education programme to the Government of India where education is made a forceful tool for the cultivation of desirable ethical, spiritual and social values. Value education should help to eliminate religious fanaticism, violence, superstition and fatalism. Education which inculcates universal and eternal values like compassion, truth, love, peace, righteous conduct, non-violence, honesty, tolerance and the like will help in developing balanced individuals and creating a good human society.