Provide education support, address child labour

"It was dark inside, I was afraid the rocks would fall on me. And one day when I went in, a rock hit me and I got a huge cut on my leg.", says eight year old Varun*.

Varun used to go to the Mica mines along with his parents to pick mica scraps. He would spend his entire day in the mines and visit these dark pits every day of the week.

States of Bihar and Jharkhand in India produce 25% of the world's Mica. According to a report in 2018, in the Mica belt of these regions, approximately 10,394 children were reported to be out-of-school, with some engaged in Mica collection. Families of these children are extremely dependent on Mica collection for their livelihood and there are no additional means of earning a living.

As the mica scrap collection is an unorganised sector, there is severe exploitation, leading to low wages. This plunges families into poverty and as a result, children are forced to work in the mines; collecting mica scraps from deep, dark pits in extremely hazardous conditions.

We address child labour in the Mica mines by working in 41 villages in 2 Mica dependent districts of Koderma and Giridih in Jharkhand. We work towards:

• Providing children with access to quality education - activity based learning, digital classes, mobile libraries
• Providing children with study material, school supplies and bicycles
• Providing additional means of livelihood to parents to build their economic capacity and reduce their mica dependence, organising them into self help groups to access a revolving fund - community led socio-economic development
• Organising children into Children's Clubs where they are sensitised on child rights and encouraged to be agents of change in addressing problems of the children in their communities.
• Providing families access to social welfare and social protection schemes of the Government
• Sensiting communities on the ill effects of child labour and the importance of education, building capacities of child based institutions.

The project has a multidimensional approach to tackling the issue through various components.

Through the education component of the project, the impact we wish to create is :

• Reduce the school dropout rates of children
• Increase the enrolment of children in school
• Keep the children joyfully and enthusiastically engaged in academic learning
• Make the child's access to education convenient
• Improve the academic performance of children
• Ensure girls complete at least 10 years of schooling
• Ensuring parents understand the value of education in their children's lives