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Children's Activity Project
As a child there are very few conditions that can be worse than being born and raised in one of India’s many city slums. Through no fault of their own, children live in cramped unhygienic conditions, often a whole family sharing one room. In the slums, disease is rife, nutritious food scarce, thus ill-health and malnutrition are more prevalent than any of us would like to imagine.
Children are often neglected. Their parents typically work long hours struggling to earn enough for basic food and clothing. Schools in the slums offer little escape as they are almost always underfunded, with class sizes twice the national average. They are always under resourced in terms of teachers and materials. Dropout rates are up to six times the national average. Pupils are routinely discriminated against and humiliated in classes because they are low caste and poor.
Children’s Activity Project offers a moment of respite for 150 children in 3 slums in Pune. The project organises weekly activities for children in slum areas- children are cared for and able to play in a safe environment. Project workers provide games and toys, play with the children and draw them out through stories, drawing, drama and singing. The project re-channels children’s destructive energy, gives them confidence and allows them to explore their emotions.
Mrs Singh’s children attend the activity project- she describes how happy it makes them, “whenever I come to collect them, they are always playing happily with the other children, on the climbing frame or with the toys or drawing pictures. I have to struggle to take them home. They look forward to it every week”.
The project also organises 3-4 day camps twice a year in the school holidays where children can escape the slums and get out of the city. One of the project workers, Namine, describes how much fun the children have “for most of them the camp was the first time they had left the city, for some of them it was the first time they had ridden in a car but I can honestly say that for all of them it was the first time they had nothing to worry about. Seeing the laughter and happiness on their little faces made me as happy as them”.