Can you imagine that a 50-paisa postcard can be used as a channel to rebuild the life of a migrant childIJ In this internet and e-mail era, very few among us are using postcard but this 50-paisa postcard is now helping migrant children to reintegrate into schools in their source areas.
8-year-old Bharat Kumar from Jharigaon block in Nabarangpur district had come with his family to work at a brick kiln on the outskirts of Bhubaneswar city last December.
He was then studying in class 2 in his village primary school. But in June this year, when his parents went back to Nabarangpur, a postcard reached to Aide-et-Action Bhubaneswar office with a signature from the school headmaster with the confirmation of reintegrating Bharat in their primary school by promoting him to class 3.
Not only Bharat, this year all the 1,515 children who migrated from western Odisha will be reintegrated in schools of their source areas by end of July, hopes Saroj Ku Barik, Programme officer, MiRC, Aide-et-Action here in Bhubaneswar.
Every year thousands of children from different districts are migrating with their family to work at brick kiln in Odisha and other States. Because they stay out of school for 6-8 months, when they come back they are unable to cope up with the studies and later they become dropouts. Unfortunately, some of them work as child labour.
To track these migrant children and bring them back to school, developmentorganisation Aide-et-action has come up with a new idea, where postcard plays a vital role.
“Three years back this concept started in Chennai where we found many school going children are working with their parents at brick kilns.
We enrolled them in nearby schools by providing study materials and books in Odia language. With the help of Sarva Sikshya Abhijan (SSA) of Tamil Nadu, Odia language teachers were teaching them in schools.
But after 6-8 months when they came back to their source areas, there was no track as to whether they were reintegrated in village schools or not, which was a challenge for us. Then this postcard concept came.
We gave reintegration letter along with a self address postcard to the parents and convinced them to enroll their children to schools at source area.
The letter has detail information about child with a request to school headmaster to reintegrate the child in village school,” says Umi Daniel, regional manager, MiRC, Aide-et-Action, Bhubaneswar, adding, “Initially the response was low, but this year we are getting very good response from the headmasters.”
The same concept is also used for the children below 6 years who getimmunization, take home ration and other services at destination place. When they come back to their villages we have the information that they reintegrate at Anganwadi centres, says Daniel.
Presently the organisation is working at four cities such as Bhopal, Bhubaneswar, Chennai and Hyderabad with 5,000 migrant children below 14 years to ensure their health and education rights. As most of the time, the Odisha Government does not have detail information about the number of migrant children and their whereabouts, this postcard concept will keep track of these children and ensure their educational rights.
The organisation has also handed over a detail database of migrant returnees to State project director and district project coordinator of SSA with a request to reintegrate these children.c