History of PCVC

Pratham Mumbai Education Initiative started working in the slums of Mumbai in 1994 with the mission of “Every Child in School and Learning well” focusing on making quality education accessible to all children.

While working on this mission, Pratham came across many children who were found to be in different kinds of difficult circumstances. Many of the children in the city worked as child labourers in industries like zari, leather, gold polishing, hotels, rag pickers and some of them were street children, child beggars on signals and railway platforms.

This led to a grim realization that the goal of universalization of primary education and ‘every child in school’ could not be achieved without reaching out to these vulnerable children who were not only victims of fate but also victims of our neglect.  Thus the Outreach program was started in Mumbai in April 2001 with the vision of ‘No Child working and every child in School’.

The target population of the outreach program was out of school children like: child labourers, street children, children begging or selling things, children in Government Institutions, rag pickers, children on platforms and pavements. The idea was to give these children a basic right to childhood.

The program was designed initially to reach out to these vulnerable children in terms of providing them with basic literacy by teaching children at their place of work or wherever they are, but in the hind sight we always aimed at complete withdrawal from work and proper rehabilitation of the child. Education being a non-controversial issue was used as an entry point and a strategy to reach to these children and gain a better understanding of their situation.

Until 2005, though painfully aware of the extremely exploitative situation that children are in, rescue and rehabilitation work was not being carried out except in extreme situations. However, the cruel death of a 12 year old boy, Afzal Ansari, a child labourer and a student of the Pratham educational class who was working in the zari unit of Govandi triggered of the initiation of the entire movement against this inhuman practice.

As a response to this tragedy, Pratham approached the Honorable Deputy Chief Minister of Maharashtra and the Labour Minister. They were informed of the sad demise of Afzal and the data of many more children working in similar exploitative situations was shared. The strong grass root presence of Pratham helped it to strongly and successfully advocate the issues of this section of the society. The magnitude of this issue was also brought to the notice of all the stake holders like the officials from the labour department, the police, the department of women and child welfare, department of health and all the likeminded NGOs of the city. Pratham appealed to all these stakeholders to come together and step into active rescue-and-rehabilitation mode. This led to the formation of Task Force consisting of the important Government departments and NGOs including Pratham. As a member of the Task Force we played an important role in the rescue and repatriation of child labourers.

Due to this initiative more than 23 000 child labourers (around 2200 through legal intervention, around 20 000 through convincing the employers) were rescued from in and around the city. Majority of these children were from the States of Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, and some from Rajasthan and Gujarat. The children were repatriated to their respective villages.

A link was found between cities like Mumbai, Delhi, Surat and States like Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal and Rajasthan; where the former being the receiving areas and the latter being the source areas. Hence, Pratham started working in these source areas in order to prevent children from entering into the labour force. Here the focus was to provide education, residential care for children hailing from very vulnerable backgrounds and age appropriate vocational training in the source areas so that they do not migrate to cities. On the other hand we also worked with the local government authorities and communities so as to make them take the onus that no child from their village is being pushed into child labour. Large scale education programs were started with the help of the Central Government in the states like UP and Bihar.

Today the outreach program is operational in 8 major states in India and this growing network of Outreach program is known as Pratham Council for Vulnerable Children (PCVC).