Pratham Mumbai Education Initiative Key Issues and
Operational Areas, Major Activiities & Achivements
Operational Districts: Guntur, Hyderabad, Karimnagar,Gaya, Patna, Purba Champaran, Sitamarhi,Surguja,Surat, Valsad,Garhwa ,Tikamgarh,Aurangabad, Mumbai, Mumbai Suburban, Nashik, Pune, Thane,Jaipur , Jodhpur,Bahraich, Bareilly, Kanpur Nagar, Kushinagar, Lucknow, Meerut,Rudraprayag
Operational States: ANDHRA PRADESH, BIHAR, CHHATTISGARH, GUJARAT, JHARKHAND, MADHYA PRADESH, MAHARASHTRA, RAJASTHAN, UTTAR PRADESH, UTTARAKHAND
AchieveMents: Pratham Mumbai Education Initiative started in Mumbai in 1994 with the vision and mission of Every Child in School and Learning Well. In the early years, Prathams area of work was Mumbai now it is spread across India.
Pratham Council for Vulnerable Children (PCVC) serves as the Child Rights and Protection wing of Pratham, established in the year 2000, with the aim of Every Childs Rights Protected, Every Child in School and Learning Well. Initially PCVC started as an outreach program in the urban slum communities of Mumbai, responding to the needs of children belonging to underserved communities emphasising on a specific segment of out of school and working children. Today, PCVC has grown from being an organization focused on working with child labourers, to a Rights based and Resource organization, working on protection and safeguarding rights of children.
While working in Mumbai, many working children were observed who had migrated from other states, majority of whom were without family. With PCVCs continuous intervention with these children, a pattern of interstate movement was identified, where children leave their home states (source) to find work in metro cities (receiving). As a result of the increasing trend of unsafe migration among children, PCVC expanded its work in other states, at both source and receiving end in order to curb the issue of child labour and unsafe migration.
Today, PCVC has strong presence in eleven states of Indiaââ¬â Gujarat, Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Jharkhand. covering around 2,00,000 marginalized children (working children, street children, abused children)annually in urban and rural areas through direct programs such as Child Rights Protection Desks, Focus City and Block Interventions, Child Rights Sessions in Schools, Multiple Activity Centres, Health and Disability initiatives.
Given the dynamic nature of the field we are engaged in, PCVC continuously strives to keep its knowledge base updated, advocate for Policy changes and facilitate innovation on field. Recent studies undertaken to achieve this are:
Opinion Poll on Child Labour across PCVC states 1,17,711 people reached
Nation-wide Study on the Status of Children on Indian Railways ââ¬â covered 63 stations in 17 states of the country
Tracking between Source and Destination Railway Platforms to Identify Unsafe Migration of Children at 15 railway stations across PCVC states reaching out to 7,529 children
Study reports on Quality Institutional Care
With over a decade of working with children, PCVC has witnessed various milestones through achievements at both field and policy level such as:
Initiated the concept of convergence of various concerned Departments through Task Force at the State level to mitigate child labour
Established inter-state coordination between source and receiving states for rescue, repatriation and rehabilitation of child labourers
Replication of residential model for rehabilitation of rescued child labourers by the state
Providing training and orientation on Child Protection to officials of various Government Departments, Police and NGOs
Monitoring strict implementation of Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) laid down by the State and Central Government and Child Rights Commission
