Prevention of Child labour and School dropouts through education and community empowerment at Mysore

The project started in the year 2010 and reaches out tomore than 700 disadvantaged children and youth from 16 slums of Mysore city. Don Bosco Mysore is the project partner and implementing agency. The purpose of the project is to educate and rehabilitate child labourers and school dropouts from the slums and streets of Mysore city with the cooperation and collaboration of parents, communities. The project emphasized on child rights promotion, education promotion and empowers the community to prevent child labour and school dropouts.

The following are the major intervention strategies of the project

• Educative presence in 16 slums.
• Facilitate the community for greater engagement and high level participation.
• Listening to the opinions, concerns and aspirations of children and people.
• Listening to the opinions, concerns and aspirations of children and people.
• Moving from the care of the victims of injustice to working to combat the causes of injustice.
• Connecting the underprivileged with those who have the desire to help them.
• Enabling adults to become supportive for children’s growth.
• Rights Based Approaches in all the programmes.

Achievements (Up to July 2013)

• 719 children have started going to school regularly because of the education intervention of the project such as bridge school, foundation school and transit homes for child labourers
• Reduced the number of child labourers from 16 slums. Eventually more than 80% of the children were joined in formal schools or the education programmes of the project
• The transit home reached out to 92 boys between 6-14years of age who are given care, protection and education
• Rainbow schools are reaching out to 385 school dropouts in 13 communities
• About 210 children completed the class X examination of Karnataka State Open School through the bridge school programme. Another 10 children are preparing to attend the same examination
• About 124 children are prepared to attend PUC examination who have passed from the open school SSLC programme of the project
• The skill training and job placement programme is reaching out to 150 adolescents and youth between 14 to 35 years in two centers
• 364 children were reached through two-day children’s camp organized every year
• Another 2080 children were gathered under the project to share their experience and insights
• Nearly 700 child labourers, school dropouts and street children are directly being reached on a daily basis under the project and indirectly their families and communities