Education at Brick Kilns in Gautam Budh Nagar district of Uttar Pradesh

Dankaur is a place surrounded by brick kilns where migrants come from Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and West Bengal to work on brick kilns and earn a living. Their children at brick kilns find it hard to access education and all other services due to remote location of brick kilns. Also since both parents come for work, in absence of any care giver, either they play in mud, take care of their younger siblings or help parents in brick fields to earn a decent living by achieving the daily targets set by contractors. Such children also start working at very young age to maximize the family income. AWSAR has been running such centres and sees an urgent need to address the issues of children neglected from their rights.

With support from donors AWSAR have been able to provide education to over 200 hundred children, however, AWSAR would like to engage with a large number of children at brick kilns and would like to run various other activities for their overall development including nutrition, recreation and health services. It would also motivate their parents to get them enrolled with nearby government facility and work with local administration to arrange for their education.

Working at brick kilns is a very challenging task; NGOs are not generally allowed to run education centres or any other welfare programme at brick kilns as most of the brick kiln owners are scared to legal suits against them. Acceptance of organisation and initiation of such kind of activities at brick kilns in itself is a big change. There has been a lot of change at the brick kilns when it comes to real change on ground. Some of the important noticeable changes are:

• Most of the children were involved in a variety of activities which includes fetching water, playing in the mud, work with parents and taking care of their younger siblings before initiation of this project. There was no emphasis on health and hygiene of children. Parents were also not interested in sending their children to education centres. But now they have started sending their children to learning centres at brick kilns. Parents believe that they could not study due to their socio-economic conditions but they do not want their children to remain illiterates. Asking children to help them in making bricks is required to get two time meals for entire family, paying debts and performing marriages and other social obligations.

• Now most of the children come to education centre on their own. There has been a lot of improvement not only in attendance of children but also in the health and hygiene of children. They now come to centres in clean clothes and take bath regularly.

• Mothers have been very supportive in sending their children to education centres. They also believe that it gives them feeling of security and safety and also helps them concentrating on their work. Approximately 300 children along with their parents were provided health and education support at brick kilns.