Regular Monitoring
The immediate challenge for the programme was to locate the home based locations and register them for the monitoring programme. Members of SGFI provided the information regarding each contractor and their subsequent stitchers. SGFI processed the information and gave unique location numbers to individual location. This database was used for regular external monitoring by SGS on random and unannounced basis. Today SGFI has over 3300 families under close watch covering over 15,000 stitchers.
Awareness Raising: SGFI is running an awareness campaign in all football stitching areas in Jalandhar and Batala by organizing free medical camps, Magic shows, street plays etc. which brought people out of their homes. In year 2000, UNICEF introduced the Center for Research in Rural and Industrial Development (CRRID), to undertake awareness raising exercise. CRRID’s main job was building the credibility of SGFI initiative amongst the critical mass. The stitching community, local youth clubs, Mahila Mandal and local leader were identified and made part of the programme.
After that SGFI took training from CRRID and sustained the awareness campaign on its own. Now SGFI has a regular campaign targeting the less aware areas. The profiling of the families was done to understand the reasons as why they engage their children in labour activities, which helped in planning for rehabilitation.
This awareness campaign has been very successful in terms of reaching the stitchers and making them understand that their children should be going to schools and enjoying their childhood and not doing any labour activities.
SGFI is committed to work on sustainable ventures so that this problem does not re-emerge or find its way out into some other area. The external monitoring and social protection projects will continue and we are constantly trying to increase the effectiveness of our campaign.
We have seen a dramatic change in the attitude and awareness of the community against the child labour. Now the village leaders (Panchayat and Sarpanch) have also started working in partnership with us. This partnership has been a breakthrough in accessing the community in a credible and trusted manner. They understand the importance of education in building the future of children.
NCLP Special Schools: Successful establishment and running of 27 transitional schools in Jalandhar in September 2000 under National Child Labour Project funded by Ministry of Labour, Govt. of India. Each school helps 50 children with 2 educational instructors and one vocational instructor. 1350 Children are benefiting from these schools.
SGFI has adopted 8 schools that cover 200 children. The children in these schools were not going to school or dropouts and are from the ages of 8 yrs to 14yrs. The objective of these schools is to prepare these children to enable them to join the regular schooling system.
Since September 2000 funds are coming from Ministry of Labour, Govt. of India which is routed through Deputy Commissioner who is the chairman of this project.
FACILITIES AT TRANSITIONAL SCHOOLS:
• Mid-Day meal
•Free Books
•Rs.100/- as monthly stipend to each student
•Free Uniforms
•Free Medical / Dental Check up camps
•Competitions like painting, sports meet , cultural etc.
•Vocational Training – garments stitching, pot making etc.
Regular Health check-ups at the schools
Health is always given importance by SGFI, so health check up for all children studying in schools as well as in free tuition centers is organized on regular basis.
A dental check-up, eyes and general check up is conducted by qualified doctors. Some doctors have volunteered their services to SGFI project on long-term basis.
Free Tuition Centers:
SGFI is running 30 free tuition centers for rehabilitating children who were previously involved in labour activities. Each tuition center looks after app. 25-30 children. These tuition centers are helping those children who are going to school in the morning. Most of their parents are busy in their work or they are not educated enough to teach their children at home after the school. The Children therefore, visit the tuition center between 3:00 PM to 5:00 PM. The time spent by these children at these centers means time away from any form of child labour.
One big achievement of these free tuition centers has been to inculcate a sense of responsibility among the parents who now prefer to send their children to these centers and not get any work done from them. Through this initiative the number of children working in this industry has been substantially brought down to a marginal figure.
Because of lack of resources SGFI is not been able to enhance the effectiveness and reach of this pilot project. So far all these activities are funded by voluntary donation by its members.
Adult education centers:
Many ladies who stitch footballs are watching keenly the efforts of the Sports Goods Foundation of India to promote education in the Jalandhar area. They had requested the Foundation to start some basic classes for them also so that at least they can sign their name and slowly and steadily they should be able to learn to read and write. The Foundation decided to respond positively to this request and they opened the first Adult Education Center at Mithu Basti where 12 ladies were enrolled. One Lady who was mother of 2 children has passed 5th Class exam from this center. Now we are helping her to sit for 8th Class exam in 2 years from now. This development is significant view of the fact that earlier parents were not keen for their children to go to school but now they themselves want to go to school. Two more adult education centers were started in Village Talhan and Vill Parasrampura, where a women footballs stitching center is being run by one of SGFI members.
Free computer education
SGFI is running a free computer training centre in collaboration with Punjab Rural information Technology Management Agency (PRITMA) at village Tajpur, Jalandhar. This centre will give free computer literacy to all children of this village and then will move to next village. This centre would be covering appx 300 children. Two instructors are hired to provide training. Village Panchayat has provided a room in the community centre building. Children are given basic training on computers and in second phase specialized training would start in collaboration with some professional institutes like NIIT, APTECH etc.
Self Help Groups (SHG):
SGFI has built over 50 SHG with 15-20 women in each group covering 800 families. SGFI found that these people are under debt constantly as they are not able to get loans for their micro finance needs and end up borrowing from local money lenders. SGFI created SHG where these women are contributing Rs. 100/- monthly towards their bank account. The money so collected is being used by the SHG members for inter loaning. Few SHG have also availed of a bank loan & have successfully repaid back also. SGFI is currently in the process of linking these 600 families with health insurance & pension benefits also.
Reach Project:
SGFI member’s wives have formed this project through which underutilized material is collected and recycled. Items like clothes, books, household items etc are collected through regular collection drives at its collection centers. This material so collected is then distributed to the poor and needy people.
CFC (Common Facility Center).
Under this project SGFI is working towards developmental projects like machine stitched footballs, multiple die cutting, single roll lamination machine etc. SGFI procured 6 machines from China & developed a football on a machine. Training was provided to workers from SGFI members factories. Members have now started procuring machines at their end.
Swasth Man Swasth Tan (SMST):
Our health project is called SMST. Under this SGFI conducts one medical camp each week at 2-3 of its tuition centers / NCLP schools, a major camp every 2 months for its workers outside of the factory. Awareness camps for health related issues are conducted at the factory itself. Besides this, daily 70 first aid kits are issued to our 3300 household workers through our monitors. This kit is replaced every 3 months also. |
