Mobile Creches Day Care Center at Patlipada, Thane - Mumbai
The construction industry is the second largest employer in the country. The proportion of unskilled workers, and in turn, the proportion of women among them, varies from 1050% of the total. By a conservative estimate, there are at least 2-5 million children on these sites.
Unskilled construction workers in Mumbai are usually drawn from a pool of landless agricultural laborers, from the states of Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh, etc. Typically, they find work as unskilled daily-wage workers at a big construction site. When the project is over, they move in search of work, to another site. They have no job security, live in cramped, temporary shacks, on a site that has one tap, no toilet facility and very often no electricity. They live life of squalor, poverty and diseases.
Whilst both parents work, the children are left to fend for themselves -on a heap of rubble and concrete, with no parent, grandmother or aunt to run to, to fulfill a physical or emotional need. At best, there is an older sibling, who is a child herself. They are burdened with household chores and have no access to education. They live amidst piles of garbage and open drains, and have no access to medical care; they move from site to site, with little recollection of where they were born and little idea of where they are headed for.
An organization working for the cause of the construction workers in and around Mumbai, Delhi and Pune has stood firm on its commitment to the vulnerable group of construction worker's children. With the aim of helping these children live a dignified life and grow up in comparatively a conducive environment, the project is running day care centers and informal schools at various construction sites.
The Mobile Creches day-care center at Hiranandani Estate, Patlipada, Thane was started in April 2000 after a survey to gauge the no. of families and children on site, the duration of the project etc. was conducted. A separate structure comprising of four large rooms, electricity, and toilet and water facilities was provided by the builder and very soon integrated day-care services including non- formal education, health care and nutrition, and stimulating recreation was provided to children from birth to 12 years of age.
The three-fold support provided through the creche, balwadi and non-formal education aims to achieve the all-round development of the child. The creches, for children up to 3 years of age, provides a secure and clean environment, as well as rich cognitive stimulation to the children. Various activities like pounding, buttoning, stringing beads and tearing paper were imperative in expediting the children's gross and fine motor development. Most of the activities aimed at achieving sensory-motor development of the children.
Most of the learning in the balwadi or preschool (for children between 3 to 5 years of age) took place through play, using dance, drama, art and craft, puppetry, stories and songs. A particular theme, i.e., the "Prakalp" or project, is selected for usually a month, and the entire educational and recreational activities center around that theme. Some of the projects undertaken during the last two years included Vegetables, our Body, Animals, Water, Families, etc. The focus is on learning through experience, and hence, during the project on vegetables, for example, the children themselves handled various kinds of vegetables, cut and peeled them the importance of each vegetable to our health was also discussed. This experience was then reinforced through activities like drawing, collage, clay-work and puppet shows.
The older children (from 6 to 12 years of age) were motivated and helped to gain admission in the local municipal school, and also received support by way of financial and tutorial assistance. However, for some of these older children, who, due to various reasons like migration and language barrier, were not able to attend a municipal school, the non formal education (NFE) at Mobile Creches was a first time exposure to numbers and the alphabet.
