WE CARE REPORT – CHILD RIGHTS AND YOU

SCHOOL OF BUSINESS MANAGEMENT

MASTER OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION

Child Rights and You

Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

Master of Business Administration

February 2017

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 WE CARE REPORT – CHILD RIGHTS AND YOU

CONTENTS

Introduction
Primary Education in India
Project Undertaken
Project Methodology
Challenges Faced
Recommendations
……………………………………………. 3
……………………………………………. 6
……………………………………………. 7
……………………………………………. 8
……………………………………………. 9
……………………………………………. 10

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 WE CARE REPORT – CHILD RIGHTS AND YOU

Introduction

CRY formerly named Child Relief and You, later transformed to Child Rights and You. CRY
is an Indian non-government organisation (NGO) that works towards restoring basic rights to
underprivileged Indian children. CRY was started by seven young people in December 1978.
One of them, an airline purser called Rippan Kapur, was the moving spirit behind the whole
thing. Their objective was to do what they could to improve the situation of underprivileged
Indian children.
What began as one man’s vision (of Late Rippan Kapur, the founder) is today a movement;
of people from all walks of life, who believe that no child must be wronged. CRY is
dedicated to creating a conducive environment for children, where Rights of the Children are
respected and protected. CRY undertakes initiatives to provide free and quality education,
primary healthcare. Alongside ensuring the psychological needs of the children are taken care
of i.e. protecting them from violence, abuse and exploitation.
CRY drives policy and legislation changes keeping the best interest of child above all. Other
measures aimed towards Child Rights is ensuring government provides adequate
infrastructure and services as per the needs of each child.
Vision
A happy, healthy and creative child whose rights are protected and honoured in a society that
is built on respect for dignity, justice and equity for all.
Mission
To enable people to take responsibility for the situation of the deprived Indian child and so
motivate them to seek resolution through individual and collective action thereby enabling
children to realise their full potential
To make people discover their potential for action and change
To enable peoples’ collectives and movements encompassing diverse segments, to pledge
their particular strengths, working in partnership to secure, protect and honour the rights of
India’s children.

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CRY focuses on the 4 basic rights of children. These were defined in 1989, by the United
Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, on international human rights treaty to which
191 countries, including India, are signatories.
 The right to survival: The Right to survive with adequate nutrition and quality health
care services, citizenship and a wholesome family life.
CRY, in partnership with local NGOs ensures that Primary Health Centres are
functional, pre and post-natal care services are available, immunisation camps are
organised. 46,896 children have benefited from health programmes in 2006-07

 The right to development: The right to let a child develop fully through free, equal
and quality education, recreation and a supportive environment.
CRY, along with its alliance partners, lobbies for policy- level changes to ensure that
children have access to quality, free and equal education; ensures that children attend
bridge classes or non-formal educational centres and are admitted into government
schools with functional infrastructure. 22,736 more children went to school on 2006-
2007

 The right to protection: The right to be protected entails that all children be nurtured
and protected from harmful influences, abuse and exploitation in any form and have a
caring, secure family.
By mobilising communities to ask for minimum wages and avail of government
schemes like employment guarantee schemes, so that they do not have to send their
children to work. Thus by demanding for an accountable governance, creating a safer
environment for India’s children. 102 more villages were child-labour free in 2006-07

 The right to participation: The right to freedom of thought, opinion, religion,

expression and action without social or gender discrimination.
All children shall enjoy their fundamental rights. Works towards ensuring this by
providing a canvas for expression – forming children’s groups, enabling motivation
and opportunities at various levels to explore their potential.690 children’s groups
formed or activated in 2006-07
Cry Partnership takes form of:
• Grant Making
• Capacity Building
• Community Mobilisationß
• Networking And Alliance Building
• Influencing Child-Friendly Policies.
• Resource Organisations
• Nodal Agencies

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Child Rights and You Campaigns

Click Rights 2014
Click Rights ‘#OpenYourEyes’ was an attempt to sensitise citizens- and duty-bearers- out of
their inertia and open their eyes to the grim reality of child labour.

Healthy Start 2015

Healthy Start campaign called for support to help . CRY and its grassroots partners continue
its efforts with communities and government workers to ensure 30,513 babies under the age
of 1 year received access to all lifesaving vaccines.

Let Her Fly 2015

On Jan 24th, 2015 on National Girl Child Day we launched our online fundraising campaign
‘Let Her Fly’ on the issue of rights of the girl child. The campaign aimed to inspire and
encourage people to give the girl child the opportunities that she so rightly deserves.

Get Healthy | Give Healthy 2015

The CRY Get Healthy | Give Healthy campaign saw more than 100 people take up health
challenges on a popular crowdfunding site to ensure a healthy start to more than 2 lakh
children under the age of five.

School The Spark 2016

The school is the only platform where every child’s hidden spark can find expression and
grow into a creative fire. The ‘School the Spark’ campaign aimed to encourage people to
contribute towards ensuring that thousands of such hidden sparks, find their way to light,
through proper schooling.

Right to School 2016

Even today, thousands of schools in India lack basic amenities like drinking water and toilets.
The CRY Right to School Campaign aimed to turn these schools into functional schools and
give children their right to education.

Joy of Five 2016

The Joy of Five campaign aimed to ensure that 2,50,532 children across CRY-supported
projects experience the joy of turning five.

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 WE CARE REPORT – CHILD RIGHTS AND YOU

Primary Education in India

India is a country with more than one billion people, and just one-third of them can read.
Rapidly growing size of population, shortages of teachers, books, and basic facilities, and
insufficient public funds to cover education costs are some of the nation’s toughest
challenges. This is where Children in India are facing the basic challenges. According to a
study, more than 30% of educational funds are allocated towards higher education, leaving
the primary education in India in sway.

India is fourth among the top 10 nations with the highest numbers of out-of children in
primary level. Furthermore, the rate of school drop-outs amongst students is very high
Dropout rates in India:

Chart Title
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All Categories - Classes I-V - Total All Categories - Classes I-VIII - Total All Categories - Classes I-X - Total

Attendance remains a pervasive concern. ASER statistics shows that in 2014 only 71.4% of
primary children enrolled were present on the day of the visit which is almost same as 70.7%
of 2013 visit. Reports show that there is a decline in attendance from 2009 to 2014; in 2009
attendance recorded was 74.3%. There is a drop in the Teacher’s attendance rates from 89.1%
in 2009 to 85% in 2014 on the day of the visit.

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Project Undertaken

In my social stint with CRY I was working on a (CRY) supported project Swati, a project run
by the Rajiv and Neelu Kachwaha Trust which has been working with the slum children of
TIGRI and Kanak Durga slums of RK Puram sector 12.
The main thrust of project SWATI was to cater to the educational needs of the children,
through which they hope to address other issues as well. Through committed efforts of the
organisation, thousands of children have been mainstreamed. The organisation is also taking
up the issue of malnutrition and due to their efforts all the children in the intervention area are
covered under ICDS now. Also, the organisation is instrumental in creating awareness
amongst the community about importance of sanitation and hygiene. The organization is also
working towards empowering women and the youth group to take up issues with concerned
authorities.

My work involved teaching kids in Swati (RK Puram) with the aim to help them in overall
personality development. Supplementing school studies with a different approach in learning
Mathematics and English.

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Project Methodology

I conducted daily sessions for Maths and English (standard 3 to 5).Realising that the
students were facing difficulty in grasping concepts in English. I used videos and
animations to present the topics, this increased students reception of the study
material. Students enjoyed this approach and found it easier to learn through the
videos. To ensure students are engaged and to provide students with an enriching
learning experience, I used a similar approach for teaching them mathematics as well.
The concepts in mathematics were taught using drawings to simplify the topics and to
increase interest of students.

In English I progressed from teaching the students 3 letter words to making complex
sentences. Making students learn poems and words through the videos. In the latter
half I covered several personality building activities and topics such greetings, good
manners, relations. Students were encouraged to exhibit good manners and exchange
greetings. To promote this behaviour students were rewarded for their good conduct.

In mathematics I taught varied topics ranging from addition, subtraction

multiplication, fraction and clocks. The class was a mix of students from class 3 to
class 5, I ensured every student understands the topic and customized the teaching
pattern to suit each student individually.

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Challenges faced

At my first day with CRY, during my orientation I was introduced to various issues of child rights
which is faced by children of our society. To my surprise the figures of drop outs were extremely
high for underprivileged children. It gave me immense pleasure when I was told I will be working in
this area of concern with SWATI.

However, there were various challenges I came across during this internship and it was only
due to the help of Rupaji, Swati Faculty, and my Co-Volunteers, that I was able to handle
them.
Some of the challenges were as follows:
1) Though the students were extremely excited during the initial days, it was difficult to
maintain the same excitement level as the time passed. Thus, I had to adopt new and
innovative methods of teaching to constantly attract their attention and keep them
engaged. While some of the methods were successful some were not.
2) Given the diversity of the class in terms of age, some methods were more suitable for
specific students and other methods for rest of them. Therefore it was a task to take
the entire class together on the path of learning. Also, the time constraint made it
more difficult.
3) I often faced a situation where my focus was more towards low performing students
and due to this the other students got distracted and their class participation fell down.
This resulted in low performance of other students in following classes.
4) I had control over students during the class, but I could not monitor their after class
activities. The children were told to do household activities which resulted in
incomplete homework and not revising the topics once children went back home.
5) Another challenge was to develop interpersonal skills in such a short span of time.
The NGO is constantly working to address the above issues and challenges by counselling
student’s parents and have been remarkably successful.

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Recommendations

Today SWATI fulfils the needs of these children through various programmes like Non-
Formal Education (NFE), Balwadis (Play Schools), computer literacy programme, typing,
tailoring and stitching programs. It is gradually moving towards ensuring that the
Government takes the final accountability towards ensuring rights of the children.

Some of the changes enabled are:

• 4 children are linked to remedial classes under the SWATI project
• 100% immunisation has been ensured for new born children in the project area
• Drop out children have been re-enrolled in schools and mainstreamed
No case of RTE violation has been reported
However, there is still a long way to go. A lot of efforts goes into maintaining the standards
of the trust and adopting new methods of teaching and spreading awareness.
Based on my experience and observations during the period of my internship, following are
some recommendations I would like to make:
1) I felt the need to conduct classes for students of different standards individually
instead of clubbing them since it gets difficult to take all the students along together.
2) A more standard curriculum needs to be followed which can give clarity to volunteers
about the syllabus
3) Conduct small test at the NGO, to test the progress of students and provide special
assistance to students who are not performing well separately.
4) Plan a Daily Time-Table for students and faculty so that students can carry required
stationary, and finish their homework on time.
5) Conduct regular workshops which will help students develop interpersonal skills,
hone their creativity skills and awareness campaigns.
6) The classrooms need to be better lit.

I personally feel, the NGO has done a lot for students and other NGOs can learn a lot from
SWATI. Teacher’s are highly involved at SWATI with the students which helps to extend
personal attention to students. Also, some of the facilities offered by SWATI to students with
the help of CRY are extraordinary like football and dance classes. The infrastructure of
classes is extremely good since advance technologies are present which makes adopting new
and innovative methods of teaching easier.

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