ACTIVITIES 

BALWADI & NON-FORMAL EDUCATION CENTRE

Balwadi and the NFE center are the means to reach the means to reach the WIP and motivate children to a better future. It also serves as the base for the immediate legal and medical requirements for  children and women in prostitution (especially STDs/HIV/AIDS awareness, referral cases and weekly doctor's visit). The Balwadi helps in grooming up children (between the age group of 3 to 5 years) to be admitted to the regular formal schools instead of an exclusive school (isolation ward) for the children of WIP. Children should be allowed to join the mainstream by interacting with various sections of children to get exposed to the outer world and investigate pros and cons for themselves instead of we giving them sermons of morality. The NFE center caters to the children who can not attend formal schools. The children are occupied in play activities, concept formation, personality development, value education, counseling, hobby classes (music, art, drama) and are taken out for picnic etc.

INTERVENTION AT KARAR    

  Since last two years we have been living in a Bedia Village (tribe involved in traditional family-based prostitution) as a part of our new  strategy where we don’t want to be an outsider. Such Villages are also supply centers of girl child to the ‘redlight area’ in the cities.  Apart from 50 children in the NFE centre we are sponsoring 20 children in the formal school who all walk down 5km.each  day. The NFE centre was built by the women’s support. Moving ahead of just being a teacher we involve the women in playing kabbaddi, cycling, dancing, singing, picnic, cooking to take them beyond themselves rooted in the traditional family environment of prostitution, to explore the definition of life in a wider perspective, without being judgmental. It has given a wider base for dialogue, understanding, confidence, personal emotional relationship. The intimacy with their ‘inner- chord’ has broadened our  own limited understanding about the nature of an ideal intervention.