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AID Gurgaon and Mobile Creches
http://h2o-india.blogspot.com
Coordinator : Deepak/ Nishank
AID Gurgaon was started in
Sept, 2005 as an extension to AID Delhi Chapter (http://delhi.aidindia.org/) by few
volunteers in Gurgaon. The volunteers of AID Gurgaon came to know about the
initiative by Mobile Creches and got associated with Mobile Creches center
located at Vatika
Center, Sohna road. Mobile Creches (www.mobilecreches.org) has
been working for upliftment of children of construction site workers to
ensure a better future for them. Mobile
Creches was started in 1969 with the intention of enabling young children of
marginalized and mobile populations (esp. construction workers) to develop into
competent and confident individuals. Currently Mobile Creches provides child
care services at 65 day care centers at construction sites and in slums
across Delhi, NOIDA (Uttar Pradesh), Gurgaon (Haryana), Mumbai and Pune, from
9.00 a.m. to 5.00 p.m., six days a week. There are 8 Mobile Creches centers
located in Gurgaon.
 Generally the children of construction site workers are a neglected lot
in our society. They keep moving from place to place along with their parents
and have no fixed base where development of child can take place. Moreover, the
parents can’t afford to keep their children at boarding schools (for some it is
difficult to even make both ends meet). When the parents go to work, there is
no one to look after young children. As these children grow up, they don’t have
any proper access to education either. This becomes a vicious cycle for them,
as the children grow up without any proper education and have to remain in the
labour class. Thus the volunteers at AID
Gurgaon have come forward to ensure that these children are not deprived of
education.
The volunteers of AID Gurgaon visit the Mobile Creches center every
Saturday. They spend 2-3 hours there and interact with the children there. The
activities range from teaching English, Hindi and Maths to playing games with
them. Teaching has been a challenge for most of the volunteers. It is not
because the children are weak or less talented. In fact the children regularly
show a lot of will and enthusiasm in learning things. But teaching children is
more of an art which the volunteers at Mobile Creches are learning with time.
One really needs to make a bond with the children and have to come down to
their level to teach children. As the saying goes, “ A good scholar is not
necessarily a good teacher", so it has provided a good insight to the
volunteers that just having a lot of knowledge is not enough when it comes to
teaching.
 When the volunteers go every Saturday then children greet them with lot
of excitement and everyone shouts, “Good
Morning Bhaiya, Good Morning Didi” in chorus. The children have become really
good friends of the volunteers. During each visit, the children are divided into
small groups depending on their age groups and the level of knowledge. Then it
becomes the task of each of the volunteer to decide as what is to be taught and
how to manage the children. Educational materials are provided from time to
time and help of teaching aids like blackboard, charts, books etc. is taken to
effectively teach the children. The social workers of Mobile Creches are
present all the week at the Mobile Creches centers, but the volunteers due to
their work schedule can only manage to go on Saturdays. Due to the limitation of time involvement,
the teachings hasn’t been able to happen in leaps and bounds but slowly and steadily
children have learned a lot. Also extra co-curricular activities are organized
for the children from time to time to ensure their overall development. Children
there get more excited to show their skills whether it’s solving jigsaw
puzzles, singing, drawing or sports.
Regular visits to the Mobile Creches center
has been carried out since the starting of 2005 though initially the number of
volunteers was less. The group of volunteers has mainly consisted of working
professionals, especially as Gurgaon is a temporary abode for most of them. On
the positive side this has led to carrying on the activities in a more
professional manner along with better networking with people and raising funds
as and when required. However, there has been a downside to this aspect as some
people had to move on due to change in job, transfers etc. Moreover the
demanding work schedule and going home for personal reasons has sometimes led
to the unavailability of few of the volunteers during some weekends. But this
has not at all deterred them in carrying forward the initiative and with time
AID Gurgaon has become a team of more than 20 people from different companies.
Since past few months there has been a regular increase in the number of
volunteers by the effort taken by the existing volunteers and warm co-operation
by AID Delhi
chapter. Many people have taken the initiative to invite their friends and
colleagues to visit Mobile Creches and now they are also part of the team.
Apart from the regular visits, there have been regular discussions on the
issues faced by the children and how the help can be more helpful for them in
the coming future. The volunteers have facilitated the admission of around 35
children in a nearby Government school and the children were really really
happy to go to school. The volunteers have also taken the lead to talk to their
parents to ensure that the parents feel more responsible towards their child’s
education and take necessary steps. The stress has been to not to make the
parents reliant on charity, but to infuse the feeling of doing things on their
own.
To summarize, the AID Gurgaon has seen an organic growth, growing from a
small team of 2-3 people and now a group of sizeable strength. The association
with Mobile Creches has led to a heartening experience for the volunteers as
well as the children there and it will be carried forward with more zeal in the
future. The volunteers are also trying to spread awareness among the people and
foresee more volunteers joining them in the future.
Write to
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