DukeEngage | Duke Center for Civic Engagement

It is 4:41 AM. I am sitting on the lower of a rustic wooden bunk bed, ear phones in the place of ear plugs, which I have been wearing most of the night to block out the clattering and whirring of the air conditioner and fan which are still operating at full force. To the merit of these two devices, there is a constant wind that has been blowing on me all night, likely the reason why I woke up after a rather short, unrestful sleep. I am wearing a sweater, and it is cold – one thing I did not expect to say upon arriving in India – although I am sure my expectations to be roasted alive will be fully met, as the forecast predicts a temperature of 114 for later in the day.
We landed at Indira Ghandi International Airport last night at around 9:45, and it took us until midnight to gather everyone, find luggage between power outages that froze the conveyer belt every five minutes, and finally find our way to Sahara house. On the drive over, it struck me how similar Delhi looked, smelled, and felt like China. But through all the feelings of familiarity, the magnitude of foreignness to this place was overwhelming. Beyond the apparent differences in language and dress, it could immediately sense that I had landed in a culture completely unlike my own, and I don’t think I have ever felt that so strongly before.
I am sharing a room approximately the size of my dorm last year at Duke with five other girls, which puts things in a bit of perspective. After this experience, I am sure I will hesitate before complaining about the size of my living quarters.
The staff here are gracious, if a bit hard to understand through their thick Indian accents. Two of the staff members, whose names elude me at the moment, gave us impromptu welcome speeches last night while I was so tired I could barely keep my eyelids open. But even through my fatigue, their enthusiasm for their work was unmistakable. At this point I’m still not quite sure my job will be for the next eight weeks. I expect that we'll be getting more information in the next few days before we start work on monday.
It is now 5:27 and my computer is running low on battery power. I can’t charge it until I buy myself an adaptor for my power cord – one of many things I don’t understand, why, in a world of open trade and communication, different countries somehow end up with power outlets of different shapes and sizes.

This was written on May 14th, 2008, upon first arriving in Delhi. The rest of my Duke Engage blog posts can be found at: http://cedarsatin.blogspot.com/

I arrived in Delhi to start my Duke Engage project with Prayas on 5th May, 2008. In Delhi, my local cell number will be (+91) 9810894004 and my address will be Ankit Prasad, Prayas Institue of Juvenile Justice, 59 Tughlakabad institutional Area, New Delhi- 110062. My email will be ap77 (at) duke (dot) edu.

Now a little bit about the organization I'll be working with:

Prayas is an organization working with poor, marginalized, and neglected, street and slum children of India to guarantee them their basic rights to food, shelter, health, and education. The organization was started by the Delhi police in 1988 as a rehabilitation measure when a fire in a Delhi slum rendered a number of children homeless. Later Prayas was registered as a separate Non-Government Organization (NGO) and today it serves about 50,000 beneficiaries in eight states of India. The organization itself has very strong credentials: the first lady, Mrs. Laura Bush visited the organization’s head quarters in Delhi during her trip to India in 2006 and later wrote back a very strong letter of commendation. Prayas also received a letter approving its efforts of the US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice. The organization currently hosts about 200 volunteers a year from India and abroad. International agencies that repeatedly send student volunteers to Prayas include VIA e.V, Germany2; GAP Activity Projects, Berkshire, UK; and Suas Educational Development, Ireland3.

The target group of Prayas is the poor and marginalized children. Approximately 80-100 million children in India are out of school and are often made to work to earn their livelihood. Often the family is too poor to support them and forces them to employment. Other times, the children themselves run away from home because of the destitute conditions prevailing there and have to work for food and shelter. Child trafficking is also an issue for the country. Poor children are often lured with promises of lucrative job opportunities into sexual exploitation, forced labor, drug peddling, camel jockeying and such. Some children out of desperation may also get involved in criminal activities and end up in conflict with the law. The needs of these children also differ slightly from place to place – for example, the primary requirement of children in the earthquake affected regions of Gujarat and the tsunami affected regions of Andaman would be shelter and livelihood, whereas that of the children in the insurgency affected areas of Assam would be safety and security.

All the goals of Prayas are child-focused. Working with these children, it attempts to fulfill their basic rights of life. The organization tries to provide these children with education, health check-ups and vocational training. Since the children are often too old or simply unprepared to directly be enrolled in the age-constrained grades of regular school, Prayas runs more than 110 alternative education centers with a capacity of 10,000 students throughout India where children are taught until they are ready to be mainstreamed into regular schools. So that these children are able to earn their own livelihood when they step out of school, Prayas imparts vocational training in 23 trades such as auto-repair, embroidery, candle-making, typing, accounting, and screen-printing. For homeless street children, Prayas runs six shelter homes, with a total capacity of 1000 children, where the children are housed and fed. It has medical clinics and two mobile health vans to provide basic health-care to slum children. The organization also realizes that if the family is financially secure, the parents of slum children are more willing to put their children to school and not make them work. Hence, Prayas attempts to economically empower the families via forming self-help groups in the communities and running vocational training courses for targeted adult family members. In these self-help groups, adult members get together forming a group where they contribute a small amount of money each month until the money can be lent among themselves for initiating vocational start-ups. These groups are guided by Prayas while collecting capital and starting small scale businesses. Prayas is also the only NGO in India to run an observation home (juvenile jail) for children. Here children below the age of 16 who are in conflict with the law are housed. These children may have been accused of various crimes, ranging from minor theft to murder and rape. There are facilities for alternative education, vocational training, and sports in the home itself. The children are also counseled on emotional and interpersonal matters to help him abandon any anti-social behavior.

The needs of this marginalized population are complex. By working at the grass-root level and approaching education, health, shelter, and other needs of the children simultaneously, Prayas takes on a multifaceted approach to solving the children’s problems and guaranteeing them their basic rights of life. Such an organization is perfect for a DukeEngage project as one can gain various skills and experience in multiple fields while working there.
 

About two hours from the Prayas Head Office is the center of Children’s Hope Prayas. The original name of this project was Anupam Prayas and it was started about 15 years ago in Katputli Colony, Pandav Nagar, New Delhi catering to the urban slums in the region. About four years ago, with funding from Children’s Hope, New York, this project was given a new look and renamed ‘Children’s Hope Prayas’. This is the first project I visited and it turned out to be a real eye-opener for me. On one hand there are massive malls being constructed at a booming pace all over the city, and on the other are so many people living in abject poverty. I was informed that about an estimated 9 million of Delhi’s 14.5 million people live in such urban slums.

I went to Pandav Nagar looking for Children’s Hope Prayas. The center is situated in the heart of a slum with little eroded alleys leading to it, in which cars have no chance of fitting through. To get there I had to leave the car a block away, squeeze through two buildings about two feet apart, and trudge over a plank on an open sewer (see pic). At the center I met Akhilesh, the lady in charge of this project since its restoration by Children’s Hope, who told me more about the project. This project consists of a number of alternative education (AE) centers, remedial centers, playschools, vocational training centers, and Self Help Group (SHG) formation and facilitation centers. The AE centers cater to children of the age 6-14 years who have been unable to attend formal schools and can no longer join formal schools as they are too old to join the initial grades. These children are enrolled in the AE centers where they are brought up to speed with the level of knowledge appropriate to their age and then enrolled in formal government schools. Typically children are kept in the AE center for a year before being moved to formal mainstream schooling. All of Children’s Hope Prayas’s fourteen AE centers in the region are run in two shifts from 9:30 am to 1 pm and 2-5 pm serving 300 students each shift. After the children have been mainstreamed, they attend Prayas’s remedial classes in the four remedial centers established under the project. This is to ensure the students continue attending school as well as to provide them with additional attention if they are facing difficulties in certain classes. All the students are also given monthly health checkups by a Prayas doctor who maintains a clinic in the slum and thus is also available if a child needs immediate attention. The project also provides vocational training in computer training, beauty culture and tailoring. For this, necessary computer labs, parlors, and tailoring centers are run in the slums. Thirty SHG groups have also been created in Pandav Nagar and the surrounding regions.

Shiv, a project staff, showed me around the slum taking me to all of the project centers. The slum is in an absolutely miserable and unsanitary condition with garbage piles, open sewages, and flies everywhere. Shiv told me stories of how Prayas constantly gives aid to those in need, for example, it constantly supplies groceries to TB patients in the region. Prayas’ AE centers, although crowded, were all alive with little children. Shiv informed me that there is an immense shortage of space in the overcrowded slum. One of the girls in one AE center handed me a crayon drawn card with a flower on the front that said “Welcome to Prayas” on the inside. I also got a chance to see some of the fruits of the SHG groups: local photocopy shops, tiny grocery shops, and manned phone booths started using loans from the SHG groups. I met some of the residents of the slum who made little puppets for a living and had set up the puppet stall at the Prayas fest in M2K Mall on Friday (see previous post).

Prayas is clearly doing a lot of work in the region, but it is also clear that a lot needs to be done to improve the condition in the slum.

Below are pictures of the slums, the center, the open sewer you have to cross to get to the center, alternative education classroom, vocational training computer lab, and a shop set up by SHGs.

Last weekend, Prayas had a Heritage Fest in M2K mall, Pritampura, New Delhi. What is a heritage fest? Well take a look at the picture of the invitation card that was sent out for the event below.

The days leading up to the Fest, the Prayas Head Office had been busy in preparation. I helped out the staff with writing emails, letters, and press releases about the event. On Friday, it was nice to see that the press actually showed up and a number of reporters from newspapers and TV news channels were present.

The purpose of this heritage fest was basically to provide a platform for two groups of people: (i) the children from the numerous alternative education centers of Prayas who got an opportunity to showcase their talent, and (ii) students from numerous vocational training centers (such as tailoring, puppet making, arts and crafts, etc.), who were allowed to set up tables inside the mall and sell the products they’ve made.

Since the heritage fest was a three day long program, children of other small nearby schools were also given a chance to put up performances. I’ve attached pictures of the event and the performances.

The kid who looks like Charlie Chaplin in the pictures is actually a 4th grade student in Prayas’ alternative education students. His name is Mausam Khan, and he goes to Prayas’ Patel Nagar center. A slap stick comedian at the event, Mausam said that he learnt the art from his father who performs, as a profession, at fairs and wherever else he gets the opportunity.