From Child Labour to College: Support Her Future

Bellow is the Karuna Programme Manager's project summary for the last year's work. 

The team have established a relationship of trust and equality with all stakeholders who now have a strong sense of ownership of the project. Most impressive of all is the role parents are playing in the management of the schools and in raising funds for infrastructural work and other needed resources. An informal network of school teachers has also come into being during this year where exchange of resources and learning takes place.

Through Karuna’s regular oversight, we identified areas of improvements for the project and worked together with our partner to strengthen and improve delivery, and ensure sustainability of their work. We put our partner in contact with a local expert who assisted them in putting in place a good system of monitoring progress of vocational training students and in undertaking a market survey to identify areas of demand and develop a more robust placement strategy with the local industries.

We also encouraged the project to develop a more systematic and sustainable relationship with the local education authorities by sharing their successful education improvement model. The team followed our recommendation and has now successfully become “Master Trainer”, undertaking teacher training for the local education department. The project has also been appointed as the NGO representative on the Women’s Development Committee set up to address issues faced by rural women; and as the NGO representative of the government child development services Anganwadi Development Programme.