strategies
Ensuring the fulfillment of the right to education is dependent on targeting a wide range of correlating factors, thus, the programme has a two-fold strategy:
1) grassroots outreach projects in cooperation with locally established committees in Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand and Delhi, that include running preparatory learning centres, mapping of children who are out of school and making action plans to enroll them, providing families with monetary support through alternative livelihood opportunities or scholarships, strengthening the quality of schools and the learning environment, monitoring the situation of child labour, holding teachers workshops, and lifting general awareness on the right to education and the rights of the child in general in the local communities
2) organizing public hearings on the right to education, advocacy and advisory work targeting the Government, lobbying for lifting both accessibility and quality of schools, which must include child-friendly environment with basic amenities like potable water, clean and adequate numbers of toilets for both girls and boys, gender sensitive education policy targeting school enrollment of girl children and securing the presence of female teacher in every school.
Right to Education Initiative
 School girl at the Firozabad school. |
Under the Right to Education Initiative, The Child Trust runs a bridge school in Firozabad. The Child Trust has conducted an in-depth study to map the number of children who are missing from education in Firozabad. The The Child Trust team networks with teachers, community leaders and NGOs in the nearby villages to exclude children from work and facilitate their enrollment in schools. The Child Trust has formed a School Management Committee (SMC) which looks into functioning of the School in the village; the committee monitors the situation of child labour; disseminates information on child rights; makes action plan to enroll children in the school and strives to improve quality of education in nearby schools.
Under this programme, The Child Trust team in Jharkhand has also initiated the community mapping to find the scale of child labour and number of children missing from education in the villages around Ranchi, the state capital.
We also run a learning centre in Delhi, which provides children with preparatory schooling in a semi-formal setting. As part of the Right to Education, we have organized training and capacity building workshops for teachers as a part of strategy from both the government and private schools on Right to Education, eradication of child labour, strengthening of the SMC, Integrated Child Protection scheme and the like. The Child Trust has also organised a public hearing on the Right To Education.