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Children’s Hope Prayas

Children's Hope Prayas
Areas :- covered Anand Parbat
Working with :- Marginalized and Working Children
Issues covered
The project 'Anupam Prayas' (now Children's Hope Prayas) was started as a training and sensitization program for protecting and promoting child rights. It was concerted to help neglected children of the families adept in performing traditional art forms. Since these art forms are taught to these children from an early age, they tend to fall in the vicious circle of exploitation, deprivation and illiteracy.

The basic conception behind this project is the elimination of child labor and the promotion of child rights by providing education and vocational training to working children. Besides promoting primary health care, mid-day meal is arranged for participating children. To encourage women’s empowerment by promoting Self Help Groups for women and other programs eliciting community participation.

The Project
Delhi Cop, Amod K. Kanth, started Prayas in the year 1988 as an emergency relief and rehabilitation measure for thousands of children rendered homeless due to a devastating fire in one of the biggest slums in North Delhi at Jahangirpuri re-settlement colony. Delhi School of Social Work (Delhi University), Shramik Vidyapeeth and Ministry of Human Resource Development (Govt. of India) collaborated with Prayas in implementing programmes to restore childhood of all those children who were on the brink of starvation and deprivation. Based on its philosophy that the needs and rights of a child are synonymous, Prayas started its initial intervention with 25 children in Delhi. Today the organization caters to the basic needs of 50,000 neglected and destitute children besides vocational skills development and economic empowerment programmes for youth and women. As work progressed in Jahangirpuri, Prayas realized that the problem of such children could be found practically in every part of Delhi. Responding to their needs, Prayas established another such centre in West Delhi and christened it as Anupam Prayas. Anupam Prayas beginning with Kathputli Colony in 1994 has been not only an adventurous one but also very fascinating. It was on September 1, 1994 that Ms Anjana Baweja was appointed as the Manager of Anupam Prayas with the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) funding for 300 children and Vocational Courses.

This unit presently runs centres in a slum area popularly known as Kathputli (Puppet) Colony. Providentially, some representatives of Children’s Hope U.S.A. – an international organization working to promote development of women and children, visited this area. The appalling living and working condition of the slum dwellers especially the stark deprivations faced by the children and women visibly moved the visitors. Moved by this scenario, Children’s Hope immediately offered to intervene and work to improve the living conditions of this highly marginalized population. The project witnessed the formal commencement on 01 January 2004 in the Kathputli Colony under the name of Children’s Hope Prayas. Since then, the project is keeping smooth pace with its progress and expanding its horizon for serving the community. To mainstream the marginalized children in the society and with a belief that all children should get equal opportunities to grow, “from cradle to career??? approach is adopted under the project. All our experience and research indicates that this type of socio-economic shift is only possible if the needs of the community at large are addressed. To make the community self-sustainable it is required to mobilize the resources of the community. Community should utilize them in a manner with which they develop the understanding of using the available resources in the best possible manner. The focus is to help children to realize their potential and to raise the level of confidence in them. Emphasis is on incorporating vocational skills with education to build up the income generation activities among the children. Children cannot be developed into responsible individuals without addressing to the needs of their parents especially their mothers and that their health, commitment and empowerment are crucial to the success of the opportunities that Children’s Hope Prayas provides to them.