Combating Child Labor Through Education in Kolkata, India

ABBREVIATIONS AND ACRONYMS

CINI Child in Need Institute CTS Child Tracking System DPSC District Primary School Council EFA Education for All EQUIP Education Quality Improvement Program FUP Follow-Up Priority ILO International Labour Organization IQE Improving Quality of Education KMC Kolkata Municipal Corporation NFE Non-Formal Education NGO Non-Governmental Organization NRC Non-Residential Camp REACH Reaching and Educating At-Risk Children STT Student Tracking Tool UNDP United Nations Development Programme UNESCO United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization USAID United States Agency for International Development

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Child labour is both a consequence and source of poverty throughout the developing world.
Although there is no universally accepted definition of child labour, most countries have accepted the International Labour Organizations definition: Child labour is any economic activity performed by a person of less than fifteen years of age.

Theories behind the persistence of child labor have evolved over the last few centuries since the
dawn of the industrial revolution. Karl Marx said that families needed the extra income to survive in the world of working in factories, and contemporary economists point to the relationship between child labour and multigenerational poverty, especially within families headed by unskilled labourers. The approaches used to combat child labor are :

Banning child labour, because it is a violation of human rights.

Combating child labor through poverty reduction efforts, because it is an inevitable consequence of the realities of poverty.

Education as a child labour intervention draws on a number of approaches that fall

along this spectrum, as many see education for children as both a human right and a key component of breaking the intergenerational cycle of poverty.

India
India is the second most populous country in the world with over 1 billion inhabitants, and various official and unofficial sources report that India has anywhere from 10 to 30 million children working. Indias education system is also massive, and despite significant increases in primary enrollment figures over the last few decades, one out of four out-of-school children in the world is an Indian.

Kolkata
Kolkata lies within the state of West Bengal and it has an estimated 100,000 child labourers.

 Literacy rates in West Bengal and Kolkata are higher than the national average, but these statistics reveal a high degree of inequality along gender, caste, and socioeconomic lines. Kolkata has a complex educational system, and although the majority of the schools are government-run and theoretically free of charge, quality and access are two of the largest critical issues facing the system. The children in the slum areas of Kolkata face some of the largest barriers in terms of access to a quality education.

CINI ASHA is one of the most active and well-respected NGOs in the city of Kolkata. The
NGOs own research shows how parents of child labourers do not see education as something important for their children, so they have their children work to keep them occupied and possibly earn some money for the household. Many children earn money working in tanneries, making jute bags, and picking rags, mostly whatever labor opportunities exist in the slums. CINI ASHA maintains that the money earned by children does not all go to the family, and many children spend the money on themselves. CINI ASHAs studies have also shown how once their children are enrolled in school and not working, parents are able to adjust their finances, as well as adjust their attitudes towards the importance of education.One of CINI ASHAs major efforts is reducing the number of child labourers in the city through educational interventions. CINI ASHA takes the stance that every child out of school is either a child labourer or at risk of becoming one. Over the past 20 years, CINI ASHA has experimented with a number of nonformal interventions to get children off the streets, out of the workplace,and into schools. One of these interventions is the non-residential camp, or NRC. NRCs are located in slum communities where there are significant numbers of out-of-school children between the ages of 9 and 14. Over the course of one year, CINI ASHA aims to educate each child so he or she can be enrolled in the formal school system at his or her age-appropriate grade level. In order to prepare these children for entrance requirements, CINI ASHA has developed a comprehensive bridge course methodology that teaches children basic numeracy and literacy skills in a compressed period of time. CINI ASHA estimates that approximately 50% of the children at its NRCs are mainstreamed into the formal school system. CINI ASHA is currently building the capacity of other local NGOs through a project funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development. Currently CINI ASHA runs three NRCs, and partner NGOs run another five.

Contents
Abbreviations and Acronyms Executive Summary. Introduction: Child Labor
Theories of Persistence Approaches to Combat Child Labor

Education and Child Labor in India CINI ASHA

The Bridge Course Methodology How Families Adjust to their Children Being in School REACH India

Case Study
Research Questions

Methodology
Limitations Overview of Communities Visited

Findings Analysis
How do we measure success? Challenges and Barriers Can NGOs take the place of government for providing education and stopping child labor? Scalability Sustainability Replicability Is education successful in combating child labor

Recommendations

INTRODUCTION: CHILD LABOUR

Child labor is still pervasive after more than 150 years of research, public policy, and international conventions since the Industrial Revolution. As of 2004, there were 218 million children engaged in child labor, with 126 million involved in hazardous work. Although this represents a significant decrease from the 2000 statistics, including a 33% decrease in the number of children in hazardous work, the world still has a long way to go to eradicate child labor, particularly in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa (International Labour Organization, 2006). There has been no lack of discussion on the topic of child labor. There is widespread recognition that the Millennium Development Goals and the goals of the Education For All initiative are most likely unattainable without the eradication of child labor. All but two countries (the United States and Somalia) have ratified the 1989 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. The International Labour Organizations (ILOs) Convention 138, which set the minimum working age, has been ratified by 141 countries. ILO Convention 182, which prohibits the worst forms of child labor, has been ratified by 156 countries since it was adopted in 1999. However, in a majority of countries, these have yet to be followed by legislative or regulatory action, and barely over half of the ratifiers have submitted a plan of action for implementing either convention (ILO, 2006). The ILO defines child labor in Convention No. 138 as economic activity performed by a person of less than fifteen years of age, excluding some part-time work performed by children more then twelve years old. Although the convention has not been universally ratified by the ILO membership, many world governments have adopted this standard as the basis for child labor policy. This somewhat restrictive definition implies that a child is only considered "working" if he or she is employed in the market economy or in production of goods. This definition does not necessarily account for unpaid farm work or housekeeping chores that are often unreported on official statistics. Taking into account this unpaid work, as well as part-time work, and work in the informal sector, the number of working children was a staggering 211 million in 2000 (ILO, 2002).

Theories of Persistence
Child labor persists for a variety of reasons, many of them cyclical in nature. Poverty is both a cause and consequence of child labor, in a cycle that encompasses loss of entitlement, illiteracy, exploitation, and migration. Households often depend on child labor to supplement income that has been lowered due to the labor market influence of child labor (Zutshi, 2004). Early theories of child labor placed the blame squarely on industrialization and capitalism for its existence and persistence. Political economist Karl Marx (1818 1883) theorized that the advent of labor-saving technology depreciated the value of adult labor and depressed wages to such an extent that it became necessary for all family members to work in order to make ends meet. He added that industrial machinery created a demand for the unskilled industrial labor of women and children, those whose limbs are all the more supple (Basu, 1999). In Marxs model, child labor is a self-perpetuating problem, in that the presence of children in the labor market serves to depress adult wages, dropping more households below the minimum

consumption level and forcing more children into the workforce. The human capital element is a more recent addition to this model. Economist Alfred Marshall (1842 1924) noted not only the developmental and human capital effects of child labor, but its multi-generational effects as well. Marshall observed that adults who labored when they were children were less likely to realize the importance of educating their own children, and less able to provide their children the opportunity for education (Basu, 1999). The effect of technology may indeed be the opposite of what Marx proposed, however. An examination of the textile industry in 19th Century Great Britain found that technological change, decreased rather than increased, the demand for child labor. The steam engine allowed textile factories to be located in towns rather than on isolated rural riverbanks, increasing the available adult labor market. New machines that spun cotton into thread worked more efficiently broke fewer threads than children, eliminating the need to hire children to gather waste cotton or piece together broken threads (Nardinelli, 1980). Similar influences of technology are found in the rural sector as well. A study of the effects of the Green Revolution in India found a decrease in fertility and an increase of resource allocation for education among rural families that adopted higher-yielding crops (Rosenzweig, 1982). Beginning with the premise that childhood education is directly correlated with future human capital, this model views the inputs of time and money to education as an investment that will pay off in higher earnings as an adult. Child labor, then, becomes a multi-generational poverty trap, as children who work rather than attend school will not receive these human capital gains, will earn lower wages as an adult, and will often be forced in turn to send their own children to work rather than school (Basu and Tzannatos, 2003). More recent models of child labor closely examine the household dynamic underlying the decision to send children to school or work. Whereas the older unitary model of a household depicted the family as a single homogeneous entity with a common utility function, the collective model views the family dynamic as a bargaining space in which each individuals bargaining power is a function of what he or she contributes to household consumption. Another player in this model is the outside employer, who may have far more bargaining power than the child in the household bargaining space. This household model is a rather cynical one in which the parent is solely interested in their individual consumption and view their children only as agents for maximizing their utility (Basu, 1999). Livelihood security is a critical factor in the family decision to send children to school or work. Families whose income streams are prone to fluctuation will attempt to minimize risk in ways that hinder their childrens education. Poor households in India with no savings, assets, or access to credit are most likely to send children to work. When an unskilled laborer heads a family, children are more likely to work. Families will also attempt to diversify their livelihood investments by selectively sending some children to school while sending others to work or seek out vocational opportunities (Kabeer, 2000). When altruism is introduced to the household model, the economic model changes to one with multiple equilibriums. At one stable equilibrium, supply and demand for adult labor keeps wages at or above the level needed for household survival. At the other stable equilibrium, wages have dropped so low that full adult and child participation in the labor force is necessary for survival (Basu, 1999). In this model, non-work activities such as schooling and leisure are luxury goods not available to all members of a society, but desired by all. Generally well-meaning parents are forced to send their children to work in order to maintain household consumption above a minimum subsistence level, and children are only able to leave the workforce when parent

incomes surpass this minimum tolerable level of household consumption (Basu and Tzannatos, 2003). Educational quality is also critical to the parents investment decisions, and problems of teacher absenteeism, drunkenness, abusiveness, discrimination against scheduled castes, and lackluster instructional methodology all provide a strong disincentive to invest in education (Kabeer, 2000). There is a social component to this model that also plays a strong role in the prevalence of child labor. The negative social stigma attached to the act of sending a child into the workforce exerts influence on parents that counters the effect of income poverty. This can serve to keep children out of the workforce for a time, even after wages have dropped below the minimum tolerable level. However, this stigma becomes reduced considerably as other parents in the neighborhood begin to send their children to work. The degree of stigma also varies with cultural norms and differs among urban and rural communities (Basu and Tzannatos, 2003).

Approaches to Combat Child Labor

Policy and programmatic strategies also require the formation of some seemingly obvious yet complex definitions. The most fundamental is the definition of childhood. Although the ILO Minimum Age Convention sets the end of childhood at age fifteen, which is based on agreedupon international norms, there is a wide gulf between the ideals of a given countrys delegates and the behavior and culture of individuals. In the context of the industrialized United Kingdom, the concept of childhood only began to achieve recognition in the late 18th century. During this period there was a change in the parent-child dynamic, which began with the Victorian elites. These Victorians viewed the educated, nonworking child as a hallmark of respectable society (Humphries, 2003). As income and income distribution increased during the 19th century, this value of childhood trickled down from the elites to the working classes. This change in attitude during this time period coincided with a drop in overall child labor, increased literacy, rising demand for formal schooling, and culminated with legislation that defined a minimum working age of thirteen (Nardinelli, 1980). Applying the industrialized Wests definition of childhood to the cultural context of a developing country can be problematic. Different cultures have widely differing concepts of an acceptable age for marriage, childbearing, employment, military service, and democratic participation (Satz, 2003). Approaches to combat child labor fall along a wide spectrum between two extreme positions: the idealist and realist. The idealist, or purist, position is a rights-based approach that views child labor as a societal and political failure that results in the violation of a childs human rights. This position advocates a mandatory ban on child labor, prohibition of the sale and importation of products made with child labor, and making education compulsory. In this idealist position, there is no distinction between hazardous and non-hazardous forms of labor, as all forms of work that detract from a childs education are by definition harmful. The realist position, on the other hand, also recognizes the negative effects of child labor, but sees it as an inevitable consequence of poverty. Realists advocate combating child labor through poverty-reduction efforts, non-formal education for working children, and prohibition of only the most hazardous forms of child labor (Kabeer, 2001; Satz, 2003). Policy options for combating child labor can generally fall into one of four approaches: the labor market approach, the human capital approach, the social responsibility approach, and the childcentered

approach. The labor market approach views government mandates and regulations as the primary mechanisms for policy by removing children from formal economic participation through enforced bans and regulation. This has been the traditional mechanism used by the industrialized West, and it enjoys the benefit of 150 years of historical fine-tuning. However, the focus of this approach on wage employment ignores family-based child labor that can be just as hazardous to a childs development as factory work (Myers, 2000). It is evident that government policy alone is not a solution. The British Factory Acts of 1833, 1844, and 1874 progressively restricted and regulated child labor in certain industries and finally set minimum ages for employment at 13. Although these were hailed as successes in 19thCentury Britain, contemporary research shows that these acts may have had a more limited effect than originally believed. Improvements in technology may be responsible for a far greater decline in reported child labor, as well as the emergence of a middle class. There does not appear to be a correlation, however, between the Factory Act regulations and school enrollment rates. Additionally, statistics produced at the time do not account for the replacement of factory work with domestic labor, nor do they account for the possibility of the dishonest reporting of factory owners or child work in the informal sector (Nardinelli, 1980). A simple ban on child labor or a trade restriction on imports made by children can ironically have a detrimental effect on children. This can, in the short term, reduce household income drastically, while increasing the future supply, and thus lowering the future value, of adult labor. Simple bans can also drive child labor into the informal sector, and into even more harmful forms of child labor such as prostitution (Baland and Robinson, 2000). Indeed, in Kaushik Basus multiple equilibrium model, a child labor ban in the wrong economic conditions will only drive households further into poverty (Basu, 1999). The human capital approach sees child labor as a symptom of poverty, and views poverty elimination as the solution to child labor. Unlike the idealist position of the labor market approach, this approach draws a distinction between hazardous work, which includes work that impedes education, and non-hazardous work. Work that impedes education reduces future earnings and leads to the cyclical intergenerational poverty trap, and this approach dictates that access to education is the critical input that can break the cycle (Myers, 2000). This approach to child labor led to the development of programs in many countries that attempt to reduce child labor by providing subsidies in the form of food-for-education or cash-for Combating education payments. These programs attempt to remove children from labor situations by reducing the opportunity cost of schooling. However, an increase in school attendance does not necessarily correspond with a decrease in child labor; in some instances the subsidies merely supplement work income rather than replacing it (Ravallion & Wodon, 2000). While the human capital approach sees child labor as an economic problem, the social responsibility approach sees it as a problem of social inequality. Disadvantaged groups are excluded and alienated from the opportunities of society and are exploited by the economic elites. Harmful child labor is a particularly hazardous product of this exploitation. Policy initiatives using this approach have focused on building the social capital of working children, helping them organize to fight abusive and exploitative employers (Myers, 2000). Discrimination is at the core of this approach, and discrimination can happen at both the family and societal level. In India, this occurs along gender and caste lines. Girls are more often excluded from education than boys, and among members of scheduled castes and religious minorities, education may be viewed as a privilege rather than a right or even a need (Kabeer,

2000). Finally, the child-centered approach builds on the social responsibility approach, and it views child labor from a rights-based perspective. In this approach, the best interests of the child are the main focus of policy and grassroots initiatives to stop child labor, and labor includes not just economic wage-earning activities but work at home or on family farms (Myers, 2000). The child-centered approach is echoed by international agreements such as the Education For All initiative and the Convention on the Rights of the Child which describe education as a basic human right, rather than merely an instrument for building human capital. However, at the family level, education is just one aspect of the inter-generational contract between parent and child. This implicit contract states that parents will care for their children in exchange for their children taking care of them in their old age. The specifics of this contract depend on the realities in which the family lives, however, and it will reflect the economic and social realities of the environment. In this contract, education is viewed as an investment, and it must offer a guarantee of future returns (Kabeer, 2000). Historical examination of child labor in Western Europe and the United States of the late 19th Century appears to support components of all four approaches, with economic growth, technological improvement, government intervention, and changing social norms working together to virtually eliminate child labor in these regions (Humphries, 2003). Education as a child labor intervention draws on all of these approaches, if not an integral component. Government mandates of compulsory education emerge from the labor market approach and provide an intervention that does not generally encourage children to move toward informal and hazardous work. Education is central to the human capital approach in that it improves an individuals human capital and can reduce the likelihood or severity of intergenerational poverty. Education can improve ones sense of social equity and ability to organize for societal change, central to the social responsibility approach. Finally, the right to education is central to the child-centered or rights-based approach. If implemented correctly, education-based interventions should be very effective tools for combating child labor. However, poorly executed programs can fail both to remove children from child labor and provide necessary educational inputs, a disastrous result with multi-generational consequences. For this reason, we have chosen to explore education-based child labor interventions.

EDUCATION AND CHILD LABOR IN INDIA

South Asia has the largest number of child laborers in the world (World Bank, 2000). It is estimated that 21.6 million out of 300 million children in the 5-14 age group are engaged in child labor in this region (ILO, 2005). South Asian countries have passed legislation that addresses at least some aspects of child labor, such as banning child labor in hazardous industries. However, child labor is still pervasive in the region (World Bank, 2000). Indias rapidly growing economy belies a deeply divided society, split along economic, religious, and ethnic lines. India has a population of 1.1 billion, of which 36% are living below the national poverty line (World Bank, 2006). Hindus comprise 80.5% of Indias population and Muslims 13.4% (Central Intelligence Agency, 2007). Hindi is the national language and primary language of one third of India, but there are 14 other official languages, including Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Kashmiri, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Sindhi, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu (World Factbook, 2007). India has the largest number of child laborers among South Asian countries

(World Bank, 2000). Six conventions by the ILO related to child labor have been ratified by India; the Bonded Labour System (Abolition) and the Child Labour Act were passed in 1976 and 1986 respectively. However, there are increased numbers of child laborers in India, from 11.28 million in 1991 to 12.66 million in 2001 (Global March against Child Labor, 2006). And unofficial data estimates that there are 25-30 million children are engaged in child labor in the country if the domestic and agriculture sector are included in the calculation (Global March against Child Labour, 2006).

West Bengal and Kolkata Background

West Bengal is the most densely populated state in India, with a population density of 904 people per km. About 8% of Indias total population lives in West Bengal, even though the states land area is less than 3% of India. West Bengal is located in the northeastern part of India, and shares a border with the nations of Bangladesh, Nepal, and Bhutan and the Indian states of Orissa, Jharkhand, Bihar, Sikkim, Assam, and Meghalaya. There is a high incidence of child labor in the state of West Bengal. The State Plan of Action 2003, by the West Bengal State Government, shows that the states rate of child labor is 4.4%, slightly higher than Indias national average of 4.2% (The Hindu Business Line, 2003). In Kolkata, the capital of West Bengal, there are an estimated 100,000 child laborers who are engaged in domestic work to bonded labor (CINI ASHA, 2003). West Bengal has a 2,216 kilometer-long international border with Bangladesh. Bangladesh was a part of India until 1947, and it shares a common cultural, linguistic, and historical background with the Indian state of West Bengal. The official language of West Bengal and Bangladesh is Bengali. Proximity and cultural similarity, along with the existence of earlier migrants, affect migrations from Bangladesh and West Bengal (Ramachandran, 2005). There have been continuous migrations, both legal and illegal, from Bangladesh to West Bengal. Factors that affect the decision to migrate vary. First of all, between the date of Indias independence from the British in 1947 and Bangladeshs declaration of independence in 1971 from Pakistan, there have been massive refugee migrations as a result of religious persecution (Datta, 2005). After the partition of India, many Hindus in Bangladesh, a predominantly Muslim country, left the country for India. This mass migration decreased the Hindu population of Bangladesh from 30% to less than 10% (Datta, 2005). Secondly, political instability has contributed to Bangladeshis decisions to migrate to West Bengal. For example, there were extensive migrations following the 1975 assassination of Mujibar Rahman, the founding leader of Bangladesh. Finally, since the 1990s, people have migrated from Bangladesh to West Bengal for economic reasons. Migrants to West Bengal are often engaged in the informal sector because of their low educational background (Datta, 2005). In addition to migrants from Bangladesh, many families migrate from neighboring states, such as Bihar, to West Bengal. Kolkata, capital of the State of West Bengal, was formerly called Calcutta. The city was renamed in 2001 to reflect its Bengali pronunciation. Kolkata is enclosed by the Hooghly River on the west, by a creek to the north, and by salt lakes about 2.5 miles to the east. Kolkatas location was attractive to the British because Kolkata is close to a port, so they could easily travel on the Indian Ocean, export raw materials, and import finished goods (Kundu, 2003). For these reasons, Kolkata was chosen for a British trade settlement in 1690, and it later became the

first capital of British India in 1772 (Datta, 2005). In 1911, the British government moved the capital to Delhi. Currently, about 5 million people live in Kolkata, and it is the fourth largest city in India. It is estimated that one third of Kolkatans live in both registered and unregistered slums.

Education in India
India has the second largest education system in the world, with 108 million children attending primary school (World Bank, 2004). The education system at the primary and secondary levels in India consists of five years in primary school, three years in upper primary / middle school, and four years in secondary school. Secondary school is divided into two years of general secondary and two years of higher secondary education (National Council of Educational Research and Training, 2000). In 1986, a uniform National Policy on Education was announced. It had major goals for the improvement of education quality and universal access of children up to 14 years of age to education, regardless of their caste, sex and, location. The National Policy stipulated how, Education in India stands at the crossroads today. Neither normal linear expansion nor the existing pace and nature of improvement can meet the needs of situation (Lall, 2005). Although education is free and compulsory for all children up to 14 years of age, not all enrolled students graduate from primary school. According to the World Bank, as of 2003, only 80.9% of students who enter primary school complete the five-year course (See Table 1). Table 1. Indian Education Profile, World Bank 1985 1990 1995 2000 2003 Gross enrollment ratio (%) Primary Level 96.0 98.6 100.2 98.8 107.5 Net enrollment ratio (%) Primary Level .. 77.6 .. 83.3 87.5 Grade 1 intake rate (%) 116.0 .. 126.2 125.3 131.6 Primary completion rate (%) .. .. 77.6 77.3 80.9 Pupils reaching grade 5 (% of cohort) 52.7 .. 58.6 61.4 83.8 Source: The World Bank, 2004 India has achieved significant progress in recent years in terms of increasing access to education. The number of out of school children aged between 6 and 14 decreased from 39 million in 1999 to 25 million in 2003 (World Bank, 2004). Pupils reaching grade 5 significantly increased from 52.7% in 1985 to 83.8% in 2003. Despite this progress, one out of four out of school children in the world are Indians. A high drop-out rate, gender, regional and caste disparities in education, low levels of learning achievements, inadequate funds and a poor quality of education remain in India (Lall, 2005). It is estimated that there are 4.5 million out of school children in India as of 2004 (UNESCO, 2006). Although the rates vary across states, the rates are highest in northeastern and northcentral India. The rates of out of school children are the highest in Bihar (17.0%), Jharkhand (10.9%), Assam (8.9%), West Bengal (8.7%), Madhya Pradesh (8.6%), Uttar Pradesh (8.2%) and Rajasthan (6.9%) (UNESCO, 2006).

Education in West Bengal and Kolkata

Literacy in West Bengal has climbed from less than 49% in 1981 to more than 69% in 2001, is higher than the Indian average. Literacy is predictably higher in the urban regions than the rural regions, and Kolkata has the highest literacy rate of any district in West Bengal, with 81% literacy and 78% female literacy rates. These statistics reveal a high degree of inequality along gender, caste, and socioeconomic lines. In urban West Bengal, 31% of households lack a female literate adult. Literacy rates, female literacy rates in particular, are much lower for Scheduled Tribes and Scheduled Castes, with almost 50% of Scheduled Tribe women and 40% of Scheduled Caste women unable to read. Illiteracy is higher among Muslim households than Hindu households in West Bengal, particularly in urban areas. Non-literates in urban parts of the state are primarily employed in casual labor, with only 15% as regular wage earners and 20% being self-employed (UNDP, 2004).

Formal Education
Kolkatas primary school system is a patchwork of public, semi-public, private, and alterative schools, with a wide variance in quality in all categories. Primary schools comprise grades I-IV, though there are a smaller number of schools that combine primary with upper primary schooling, serving grades I-VIII. The vast majority of schools (94.1%) are managed by the state government or two local government bodies: the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) and the District Primary School Council (DPSC). KMC schools are free to students, while DPSC schools charge a small development fee. Of the schools considered private, only about 5% are financially self-supporting; the remainder receives government aid (Nambissan, 2003). Quality and access are two critical issues within the government school system. According to a 1999 survey, there were 44,646 out of school children aged 5 to 9 in Kolkata competing for an estimated 10,000 vacant seats (Nambissan, 2003). High student teacher ratios are the norm in both KMC and DPSC schools. With a ratio of 46:1 for state-run and 43:1 for city-run schools, this statistic has increased dramatically since 1999. Low per capita government expenditures on education have led to a situation in which parents consistently have to pay much of the cost of schooling, even in allegedly free schools (Ghosh, 2006). For many children in slum areas, schools are inconveniently located, terribly overcrowded, have inadequate facilities, and do not provide instruction in their native languages. Kolkata is home to residents from nearly all states of India, as well as refugees from Bangladesh. Bengali speakers are served by 72% of schools, but Hindi and Urdu speakers must compete for a small proportion of schools with even fewer qualified teachers. Teachers in government schools are also unequipped to meet the special needs of children from slum areas, who often do not begin school until much later in their development (Nambissan, 2003). For many parents, education is an unattainable luxury at best and a waste of time and effort at worst. This opinion is particularly strong among ethnic and religious minorities and members of Scheduled Castes. One Scheduled Caste parent interviewed by researcher Naila Kabeer during ethnographic research in Kolkata remarked that her husband had attended school up to age nine, but is unable to get a job. What is the use of his studies and spending all the time and money on his books? she remarked. Yes, I want my children to study and live well, but there is no use if they study and do not get any work (Kabeer, 2006).

Alternative Education
Alternative schooling has emerged in the past decade as a strategy for reaching the large number of out of school children in Kolkata. These measures have taken three major forms. The Shishu Shiksha Kendras, or Child Education Centers, have been set up by the KMC to accommodate children unable to access formal schools. The Shikshalaya Prakalpas are alternative schools run by local NGOs with government financial support and are intended to reach the majority of children outside of the formal school system. Finally, the Bridge Courses administered by CINI ASHA and other NGOs are intended to help mainstream older children into the formal school system. Such measures helped the government of West Bengal work toward, but not meet, the goal they set in 1999 to educate 32,500 out of school children by 2003 (Nambissan, 2003). The quality and efficacy of alternative schooling has been inconsistently achieved in Kolkata. Poor placement of schools, lack of involvement with communities, shoestring budgets, insufficient training, and inadequate monitoring all contribute to the failure of alternative schooling programs to meet even half of the 1999 goal (Nambissan, 2003).

CINI ASHA
CINI ASHA was founded in 1989 in Kolkata as the urban wing of CINI, The Child in Need Institute. CINI ASHA works primarily in the areas of child rights, health, and education with over 200 staff and 1,000 volunteers. They also offer protective and rehabilitative services to many street children, including two half-way houses and the operation of Child Line, a 24hour toll-free line to report children in need of immediate assistance. It is important to outline the route that led CINI ASHA to its work in education and talk about how it grew out of its partner organization, CINI.

CINI, The Child in Need Institute

CINI was founded in 1974 in Kolkata to work towards achieving sustainable development with the poor neighborhoods in Kolkata and the surrounding areas. CINI is one of the leading NGOs in India, and it has been the recipient of numerous national and international awards. It has also been dubbed as a National Mother NGO by the government of India to support a network of field NGOs throughout West Bengal in reproductive and child health. CINI also has its own research division, which studies the organizations own projects and other topics through the support of and collaboration with many international organizations (CINI, 2007).

Child Labor and the Birth of CINI ASHA

In the late 1980s, CINI workers began to take note of the plight of children living and working around the Sealdah train station on their way to work. After some staff meetings on the issue, CINI ASHA was founded in 1989 as the urban wing of CINI. The mission of CINI ASHA is to improve the quality of life of urban disadvantaged children through education and social mobilization. Following the riots that destroyed the Babri Masjid mosque in 1992, CINI ASHA began working in some of the affected slums. They noticed that many children were out of school, and a survey revealed that 84% of the children in the 6-14 age group were out of school.

In order to address this education deficit, CINI ASHA began working with these children by providing non-formal education (NFE) programs. These initial NFE programs were aimed at child laborers, but they soon noted that these programs were not significantly decreasing labor or even educating the children (Agarwal, 2003). The staff at CINI ASHA debated how to best serve this population, and they eventually settled on a few points. They rejected the notion that NFE programs should address the poor quality of government schools. They agreed that NFE should not be used as a band-aid to address the inadequacies of the formal school system. If the formal schools are not performing well, then reform is needed. CINI ASHA does think, however, that NFE can be used to mainstream out of school children into the formal school system. The staff settled on the maxim that when children are in school, they are outside the workforce. They took this a step further to define a child laborer as any child who is out of school. The rationale behind this definition that if a child is out of school, he or she is either working or at risk of becoming involved in labor-related activities. CINI ASHA decided they wanted to mainstream these children into the formal schools, but they knew their NFE programs were not up to the task. Around the same time, CINI ASHA had a meeting with the head of the MV Foundation, another lead NGO in India, that operated bridge courses to integrate children between the ages of 5-14 into formal schools.

The Bridge Course Methodology

To reduce the persistent numbers of working children in Kolkata, CINI ASHA took the MV Foundations bridge course approach and applied it to their own populations with the goal of mainstreaming the children into the formal school system within one year. The bridge course originally used the syllabus from the formal school, regardless of its quality. Now, the bridge course has been almost completely formalized by CINI ASHAs Monitoring & Training Unit, which has developed its own textbooks and teacher training manuals. The bridge course tries to improve on the learning environment typical in formal classrooms by forbidding the discouragement of slow children; providing constant reinforcement for every childs accomplishments; preserving the joy of discovery that learning can bring, as opposed to the rote memorization that is typical in formal schools; making abstract concepts concrete through interactive activities; and employing the catch-up principle, where games and other techniques are used to make lessons less boring when topics are re-taught so the slower children can catch up. At the end of the program, the kids prove their competence in the syllabus of their ageappropriate grade by testing into the formal schools. CINI ASHA first used the bridge course methodology in preparatory centers in slum communities. Community volunteers run preparatory centers, and they use bridge course methods to teach out of school children and mainstream them into the formal schools. According to CINI ASHA, 90% of the children in the preparatory centers were still working and giving money to their families. In the beginning, the preparatory centers focused on children aged 5-9, and CINI ASHA says they were not reaching the hard-core child laborers and older children. The preparatory centers continue to mainstream out of school children, and they are open to children from ages 7-14. CINI ASHA also runs coaching centers that provide after-school help to first generation school-goers. The coaching centers focus on helping children with their homework and tutoring them in specific subjects. Like the preparatory centers, the coaching centers also focus on children aged 7-14.

In order to try to reach those child laborers most at risk, CINI ASHA applied bridge courses to a live-in setting for children 10 to 14 years of age who sought admission into classes IV to VI. Two residential camps, one for each sex, were created for hardcore child laborers, older children who had gained much independence by working, which was harder to break. These camps were fully equipped live-in facilities for the childrens entire 6 to 7-month term. The staff felt that if the child was away from the home, the family would learn how to become less dependent on the childs income. Each camp was made up of about 50 single-sex students, and the camp had an intense program, with 10 hours of study every day. Teachers were contracted, and they also managed the camps, while representatives from CINI ASHAs education and counseling teams provided additional services. The children were mainstreamed into the formal schools directly following the completion of the camps, when their energy for education was highest (Agarwal, 2003). The camps were in operation until 2006. They were shut down, because the cost of inputs was very high and the community participation was low. In 2002, CINI ASHA started their first non-residential camp, or NRC, in Tiljala, a slum area of Kolkata with many small tanneries. The goal of the NRC was, and remains, to enroll and retain hard-core child laborers aged 9-14 into the formal school system at age-appropriate grade levels. The NRCs are designed to run eight hours per day, five days per week, for nine to 10 months. As of the spring of 2007, CINI ASHA ran three NRCs, and partner NGOs ran five NRCs under the support of the REACH India project.

How Families Adjust to their Children Being in School

After six years of conducting NFE interventions to combat child labor and build communitybased support for education, CINI ASHA conducted a study in 2003 to evaluate how families of children in their programs adjusted to accommodate the fact that their child was in school (CINI ASHA, 2003). The study focused on families that were around or below subsistence levels of income. It sought to answer two questions: 1. How do families make up for the loss of a childs income?, and 2. How do they pay for education-related costs? First, CINI ASHA interviewed the children to see what their contributions had been to their families when they were still working. All the children interviewed had been going to school for at least one year and had previously not attended school. 85% of those interviewed were between 10 and 15 years of age. This study confirmed previous studies. Although most children contributed to about 16% of the familys income, the majority of the children had spent most of their money on themselves for movies, candy, etc. Only 24% of children gave all their money earned to their mother. Many parents restated that they sent their children to work because they did not want them wandering the streets. They also hoped that they could pick up skills that would serve them later in life. Few parents considered education as an option previously, stating they thought schools were not for their children (CINI ASHA, 2003, p. 341). Following CINI ASHAs interventions, most children had either stopped working or were working less. Those who continued to work and go to school did so for a variety of reasons, but the most common stated reason was that they were afraid of telling their parents that they no longer wanted to work. Others felt they wanted to support their families, and some wanted more money to help with educational expenses and have money for entertainment. 95% of all children

surveyed said they had cut back spending on gambling, buying food, buying clothes, or watching movies. The children said they now used money for school supplies or gave money to their mothers for their education. The childrens uses of time shifted from playing and work to a focus on school. Some children spent a significant amount of time studying in CINI ASHA coaching centers, and some families had even hired private tutors to help kids with their homework. Where 61 cases previously wanted to be housewives, laborers, car drivers, or domestic laborers, 84%after the intervention wanted to be teachers, policemen, doctors, social workers, or nurses. The study also looked at the additional expenditures families needed to take on as a result of their children being in school. The annual cost of sending children to school was Rs. 600 ($14) for classes I - IV, and Rs. 1,000 ($23) for classes V - VIII. Most of the expenses were school fees, notebooks, textbooks, midday meals, and uniforms. Many families worked on average 3.7 hours more per week to make up for the lost income, and most families said this was to cover education expenses. 80% of the mothers worked more, and the children said that their fathers did not approve of them going to school. Most families also decreased expenditures on food, clothing, luxury items, etc. to cover school expenses. Mothers often cut back on spending money on themselves, and in a few cases, fathers did the same. Perception toward education had changed dramatically. In 1992, before CINI ASHAs interventions, only 8% of parents surveyed thought education was valuable for their child, and after seven years of work, 100% of mothers believed that education was important for their children, and they sent all of their younger children to school. Unfortunately, fathers still did not appear to be supportive of education after the intervention.

REACH India
REACH (Reaching and Educating At-Risk Children) India is a USAID project that aims to attract and retain disadvantaged children in formal and alternative educational programs by strengthening the capacity of Indian NGOs (including not-for-profit organizations and foundations) in selected urban and rural areas. REACH India provides grants and technical assistance to NGOs that address the basic education needs of at-risk children, defined as children, especially girls, up to 14 years of age, who are either out of school or are in school but in danger of dropping out (REACH India, 2007). REACH India is the Indian component of the larger USAID-funded EQUIP (Education Quality Improvement Program) project, a combination of programs, processes, and activities that is divided into three focus areas: EQUIP1: Classrooms, Schools, Community; EQUIP2: Policy, Systems, Management; and EQUIP3: Out of school Youth, Learning, Earning. REACH India is part of EQUIP 1, which is currently implemented in 13 countries in Africa, Asia, Europe, and Latin America/Caribbean (EQUIP, 2007). CINI ASHA has long been recognized as a leader in non-formal education in Kolkata, and it is currently receiving funding from USAID to build the capacity of other NGOs in Kolkata under the REACH India project. The CINI ASHA project is entitled Strengthening Initiatives in Ensuring Education to the Deprived Urban Children of Kolkata. According to the REACH India website: The project proposes to reach out to 30,000 vulnerable children in and out of school. These children would be mainstreamed and/or retained in formal schools by replicating best practices and innovative need-based strategies. The project will primarily be implemented by 10 sub-grantee NGOs whose capacities will be

enhanced in organizational and programmatic areas through continuous mentoring, training, monitoring and technical support. The project will focus on primary and upper primary age groups. It will conduct a one-year pilot program with 1000 upper primary age-group children for translating lessons from the ground to the sub-grantees. The project will be implemented in the Kolkata Municipal Corporation area and will focus on the most deprived wards and pockets of the city including streets, slums/squatter colonies and red light areas. As CINI ASHA is spreading their much-touted model to other NGOs in Kolkata, it is important to look at how these programs function and how well they are being implemented by other NGOs. If this non-residential camp model is successful in Kolkata, it is possible that the model may serve as an effective means of combating child labor through education in other contexts and be an example to other NGOs, policy makers, and other interested parties outside of Kolkata.

CASE STUDY
Research Questions
The elimination of child labor is a useful catchphrase for defining a myriad of project goals and vision statements, but what does it actually mean? The overall question of our research project seeks to address how the ultimate success of a child labor intervention can be defined. Is it sufficient to simply remove children from the most dangerous forms of labor, or do we achieve success only when these children are mainstreamed into the education system and receive an education equivalent to that of their non-working peers? From the projects perspective and that of local NGOs and project volunteers, what does the successful elimination of child labor entail, and how will we know when we have achieved it? We are particularly interested in the educational aspects of child labor interventions, since this is increasingly the model being used by international and local organizations. We would like to understand how these programs are addressing the cognitive needs of children of so many different backgrounds and vulnerabilities, particularly those who were out of the formal schooling system during the most critical years of their development. The specific questions to address this are: 1. Are the children enrolled in non-residential camp intervention programs learning literacy, numeracy, and other skills that are applicable to their futures? 2. How does the non-residential camp program prepare children to enter the formal school system at age-appropriate grade level and succeed? 3. What are the childrens perceptions of how they are benefiting (or not) from attending formal school or participating in NGO programs? 4. What are the parents perceptions of how their children are benefiting (or not) from attending formal school or participating in NGO programs?

METHODOLOGY
The research team visited four non-residential camps, two run by CINI ASHA and two run by sub-grantee NGOs of CINI ASHAs under the REACH India capacity building grant program. Two days were spent in three out of the four camps (1 CINI ASHA NRC, and 2 partner NGO NRCs) to observe lessons, student behavior, teaching methodology, and gain a general impression of what they day is like for the students and staff. This schedule allowed the researchers to gather data and impressions about camps run by more than one organization. The research questions were associational, and a simple research design was sufficient to gather the data listed above. The study looked at the current perceptions of stakeholders, so no time series data was needed from human subjects, as the data were gathered at one time. The five subject groups studied were the teachers, children, community members, parents, and key NGO staff members. All data was gathered between March 4 and March 16, 2007. The main data collection tools of the study were interviews and site-observations. The data collected from human subjects were mostly qualitative in nature. Once combined with project documents and already available child surveys, the qualitative data helped the researchers gain a more holistic picture of the project. The majority of the data collection instruments used was adapted from USAIDs Improving Quality of Education (IQE) Project, a ten-year initiative that ended in 2002. Interviews were the preferable data collection tool with all human subjects, as they were relatively small in number, and the research team spent sufficient time in each non-residential camp to talk with people. Teachers were asked questions about what it is like to teach at the camp, student motivation levels, instructional challenges, community challenges, etc. They were also asked about their perceptions of what the camps purport to do and how well they, as teachers, think the schools were doing. Six students from each camp were also interviewed in focus groups during the site visits to the non-residential camps. Student perceptions were gathered on such topics as what they like about the camp, why they come, what they are learning, etc. The researchers also interviewed community members that were involved in the camps. A convenience sample of parents was also interviewed as the researchers came into contact with them. The research team also interviewed key staff members from NGOs that ran the visited nonresidential camps under the REACH India framework, including staff from CINI ASHA. The staff was asked their perceptions on the programmatic side the project, such as setting up and running these camps and their impact. The CINI ASHA staff were also asked many different questions regarding the overall goals of the organization, a history of their interventions, the NGO operating framework in Kolkata, measured and perceived impacts in the community, etc. The research team observed hours of instruction at each NRC, aside from the CINI ASHA-run NRC in Tiljala, where they only spent one afternoon. Each member of the research team conducted observations, focusing on instruction, teacher-student interaction, student participation, etc. During their site visits, the researchers also made note of the presence of supplies (books, chalk, instructional aids, etc.), equipment (chalkboards, etc.), and other facilityrelated observations, such as the presence of bathrooms for each sex, any apparent safety concerns, etc. (Please see Appendices B, C, and D for the complete data collection instruments.)

Limitations
There were several limitations to this research study that significantly impact its accuracy and applicability. First, the in-country research took place over a very short time period, slightly less than two weeks, including travel time. This limited the number of NRCs visited and the amount of observation time spent in each camp. Although the camps visited did cover an ethnic and religious cross-section of Kolkatas slum population, it would be necessary to visit far more wards of Kolkata to better understand how this relates to the socioeconomic characteristics of each slum. Language was a significant barrier to this research. Although English is an extremely widelyspoken second language in India in general and in Kolkata specifically, the research team was forced to work through interpreters to communicate with children and adults in the slums. The interpreters were in all cases employees of the NGOs managing the NRCs and were often people in a supervisory role. This led to several possible biases. First, translation often took the form of paraphrasing and summarizing, rather than direct quoting of individuals, providing the NGO representatives opportunities to gloss over nuances and complications in order to portray their organizations work in a positive light. Secondly, the presence of NGO personnel with a supervisory role, let alone their functioning as interview interpreter, may have caused students and volunteer educators to self-censor and provide responses they would not have given in private. Sampling methods were also prone to a degree of bias in this study. The NRCs observed were chosen deliberately by CINI ASHA. Members of the student focus groups were selected by teachers. Parents and community members were chosen by convenience; individuals were selected because they were available to attend a mid-day meeting with researchers.

Overview of Communities Visited

The Kolkata metropolitan area is divided into 15 boroughs and 141 electoral wards under the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC), a governmental body that manages and oversees all public services in the city. The research team visited four NRCs located in the following communities.

Khanaberia
Khanaberia is a small village of 200-250 familiesbordering the present garbage dumping site in KMC ward number 58, which is within the borough of Dhapa, on the eastern edge of Kolkata. At 86,618 people, ward 58 has the highest population of all Kolkatas boroughs, and it is 138th out of all the wards with a low 61% literacy rate. The primary language of Khanaberia is Bengali. The adjacent KMC's very large solid waste dump receives nearly all of the city's garbage at 2,500 tons per day. Khanaberias residents all live in mud huts,with bamboo structures and tiled roofs. There is no electricity supply in Khanaberia. Themajority of the villagers raises fish or grows vegetables, and many people are also engaged in rag picking and gathering reclaimable waste in the garbage dump. The local KMC school is nearby,but it has a

reputation of lazy teachers and poor learning standards. The Khanaberia NRC is run by CINI ASHA, and its bamboo structure with a tile roof was partially funded and built by thecommunity.

Tiljala
KMC ward number 65 is the second most populous ward, at 80,255 people, and it is located just east of the city center of Kolkata, between Peyarabagan and Dhapa on the banks of one of Kolkatas central canals. It has a 73% literacy rate, and most of its residents are Hindi speakers and practicing Hindus. The residents of Tiljala are mostly from the neighboring Indian state of Bihar, and they migrate back to their villages seasonally, often for months at a time. The people live in small wooden and brick structures. Tiljala is home to many small tanneries, which employ large numbers of residents, including children. The NRC is run by CINI ASHA, and the building is owned and donated by the local youth club.

Peyarabagan
Peyarabagan, KMC ward number 69, is located just to the west of downtown Kolkata. The ward has a population of 42,472 residents, and it has a literacy rate of 83.1%. The majority of the residents in the slum area of Peyarabagan, where the NRC is located, are Hindus and Bengali speakers who moved to Peyarabagan a generation ago from Bangladesh and South Bengal. The slum lies around the site of Kolkatas state licensing agency, and many males, including boys from the slums, act as unofficial agents outside the agency to expedite customers applications. Many of the slums girls and women are engaged in domestic labor for area households. The NRC in Peyarabagan is run by Mass Welfare Society, an NGO with 25 years of experience working in scattered slums around the city. The NRC is a makeshift structure between two buildings: a Hindu shrine and the youth club, which also houses the preparatory center.

Belgachia
KMC ward number 3 is located in the northern edge of Kolkata, just to the west of Salt Lake City, Kolkatas growing suburb for the elite. Belgachia has a population of 53,199 and a literacy rate of 86.1%. The residents of Belgachia are predominantly from Bihar, and they speak Urdu and practice Islam. The residents are primarily day laborers, and they make jute bags and cut sandal straps. The Belgachia NRC is run by the Society for Peoples Awareness, founded in 1989. Belgachia is also home to a preparatory center, which is just next to the NRC. The small buildings for the NRC and the preparatory center were both donated by the local youth club.

Language of Instruction
Language policy is a sensitive issue in India, especially in regards to education. Research shows that children learn better in their primary language at the beginning of their educational career, mostly when they are learning how to read and write. Instruction in a secondary language should be slowly integrated into the curriculum as the student moves up the lower-primary education ladder. Each NRC the research team visited used the dominant mother tongue of the communities in which the camps were placed for their language of instruction. The predominant language in Kolkata and West Bengal is Bengali, and two out of the four camps visited used Bengali as their medium of instruction. The team also visited two other camps, one of which used Hindi and the other Urdu. No NRC visited used more than one language for instruction.

FINDINGS
Research Question #1
Are the children enrolled in non-residential camp intervention programs learning literacy, numeracy, and other skills that are applicable to their futures? The children at the NRCs are learning basic literacy and numeracy skills that are requisite for admission into the formal schools and transferable to general future work situations. There have been decades of research that show being able to read, write, and perform basic calculations are essential skills for people to have in a variety of situations. For those students that are successfully mainstreamed into the formal schools and later enter the secondary and tertiary levels of education, literacy and numeracy skills are necessary to move ahead. However, even for those students who only make it to secondary school and drop out, literacy and numeracy skills will be helpful. Many parents the research team met with could only write their name, and maybe read simple words. However, if their children can write a letter, keep track of their duties on a calendar, and read instructions to complete a task or a read a manual on how to put something together, then they are already far ahead of their parents, and they have an increased likelihood of earning more money and leading a better life. The NRCs use the bridge course methodology, which focuses almost exclusively on achieving basic numeracy and literacy skills. Formal school systems, on the other hand, often try to squeeze many different subjects into the school day. Such an emphasis on the quantity of subjects can become a detriment to student acquisition of essential numeracy and literacy skills for which the students should be gaining proficiency at the lower primary level. Each NRC the research team visited employed a reduced curriculum that focused on math and language arts (reading, writing, and foreign language).

Research Question #2
How does the non-residential camp program prepare children to enter the formal school system at age-appropriate grade level and succeed? By using the bridge course methodology, students are intensively taught as much as 10 hours per day and five days per week. There are weekly or monthly tests to assess student progress. At the end of the program, students are tested to determine whether they can be mainstreamed at an age-appropriate grade level. All NRC teachers we interviewed give homework to their students, even in NRCs where textbooks are shared. They use homework as a means to help students study and to assess their progress. However, given the fact that most of the students could not get help for the homework at home, teachers did not scold the children because of homework. Under CINI ASHAs Child Protection Policy, teachers consider every child as a unique individual with specific characteristics, and they respect every child. All teachers in NRCs run by CINI ASHA received training by CINI ASHA, and teachers in NRCs run by partner NGOs were trained by the partner NGOs after a TOT for NGO trainers given by CINI ASHA. For example, NRC teachers in Khanaberia were trained by CINI ASHA in what methodology to use for their

lessons. All teachers the research team interviewed said that training helped them to facilitate the preparation of entire courses and made them a better teacher. Teachers also learned about classroom management and childrens rights. Through the trainings, teachers could develop a year plan and lesson plans. Also, after all four phases of the bridge course are done, CINI ASHA provides in-service trainings called refresher trainings to teacher, and research shows the importance of linking pre-service to in-service teacher trainings (Block, Oaker & Hunt, 2002). In addition, to retain mainstreamed students in school, CINI ASHA has run community-based coaching centers, which are back-up support centers for mainstreamed children. Because most of them are the first generation learners in their family, they do not have supportive learning environments, and nobody can help them study at home. Volunteers from the community help mainstreamed children with their homework for 2-3 hours a day. They also meet with the formal school teachers to check students progress and attendance and find out childrens problems and deal with them. CINI ASHA runs 135 coaching centers, and many of them have four shifts a day: morning, afternoon, early evening, and late evening. By doing this, mainstreamed children get support from coaching centers at times that are convenient for the students (CINI ASHA, 2004). Shikshalaya Prakalpa, community-based alternative primary schools in partnership with the government, enrolls all school-aged children in school in Kolkata. It addresses the lack of accessto primary school. CINI ASHA runs 39 Shikshalayas and reaches 1,475 students aged between 5 and 9, who are in classes I to IV (CINI Annual Report, 2006).

Research Question #3
What are the childrens perceptions of how they are benefiting (or not) from attending formal school or participating in NGO programs? Children in the NRCs observed expressed optimism about their educational outcomes and the effects of their NRC attendance on themselves and their families. Students generally indicated positive learning experiences, even in NRCs where textbooks were shared or unavailable. Most students indicated that they would recommend the NRCs to their out of school peers. Cultural and arts activities were a focus in the two camps run by sub grantees; they employed part-time volunteer creative arts teachers. These activities were cited as a particular draw for the students in these facilities. Daily meals were also a draw for many students, as was the convenient location within the slum community. Students who had some experience in the formal schools mostly reported bad experiences: inattentive, abusive, or absent teachers. One child had been withdrawn after class I because her parents felt she had no further need for education. Students with formal school experience reported that they preferred the more affectionate and caring nature of the NRC volunteers to the teachers in the formal schools. One exception was the camp at Peyarabagan, where some students reported good experiences in the formal schools, but had dropped out for family or financial reasons. Students in the NRCs and NRC graduates who had been mainstreamed often found their horizons expanded by their educational opportunities. In response to questions about their future career aspirations, most responded that they wanted to be teachers or private tutors. Others saw themselves as bankers, doctors, or police officers. This change in perception has been observed previously in CINI ASHAs residential camps and preparatory centers (CINI ASHA, 2003; Kabeer, 2003).

The labor displacement effect of NRC education was very disparate, particularly along gender lines. While boys often reported having more leisure and study time, girls were often engaged in household or wage labor in the mornings or evenings in addition to their NRC attendance. This has also been observed in CINI ASHAs preparatory centers, where nearly 90% of children continued to engage in household work (Naqvi, 2003).

Research Question #4
What are the parents' perceptions of how their children are benefiting (or not) from attending school or participating in NGO programs? Parents cited a number of direct and indirect positive outcomes from their childrens NRC attendance. Most parents interviewed had no education at all, and the thought of their children achieving even basic literacy appeared to be a source of pride. CINI ASHA staff cited anecdotal instances of parents who were less likely to be taken advantage of in market transactions due to their NRC-attending children, though no parents interviewed cited this directly. For many parents there was a secondary behavioral benefit of their children attending the NRC. Parents stated that their children were better behaved due to the establishment of a daily routine and were establishing a culture of learning among younger siblings. While parents expressed satisfaction with the education their children were receiving from the NRCs, the sustainability of their childrens education was less clear. Many parents cited financial difficulties that would prevent their children from continuing on to secondary school, including the purchase of uniforms, school fees, books, lab fees, books, and supplies. Several parents inquired about the possibility of scholarships or free school supplies for their children. In the Urdu-medium NRC, the scarcity of Urdu-medium secondary schools in Kolkata was a significant barrier, while in another NRC seasonal migration withdrew children from the NRC for long periods of time. Prior research by CINI ASHA cites migration and engagement in work as the most often cited reason for children dropping out of school, with financial problems and lack of parental motivation not far behind (Naqvi, 2003). The NRCs did appear to be successful in raising demand for education among urban slum parents. Many parents interviewed aspired for their children to attend secondary school or higher, if not for financial barriers. This contrasts somewhat with the more fatalistic view encountered in some previous studies, in which parents considered education a pointless sacrifice of current income for future earnings that were unlikely to materialize (Kabeer, 2006). The NRCs also appeared to raise expectations of quality in most of the observed areas. Parents had overall positive opinions of the quality of instruction and teacher performance in the NRCs. They tended to have far more negative opinions of education quality in the formal schools. It is unclear what this perception is based on, however, since very few parents interviewed attended school themselves or had sent their children to formal schools in the past.

ANALYSIS
How do we measure success?
This section describes some of the attributes that makes CINI ASHAs NRC model so effective and some of the models challenges and barriers. The following section explores whether NGOs can or should take the place of government for providing education and stopping child labor. The report concludes with a discussion on how successful education is in combating child labor. Mainstreaming The ultimate success of a child labor reduction program is lessening or eliminating child labor. CINI ASHA uses education to displace a childs labor with their attendance in school. In order to achieve the ultimate goal of reducing or eliminating child labor, the NRCs seek to mainstream children into the formal school system at an age-appropriate grade level. According to interviews the research team held with CINI ASHA staff members, approximately 50% of children from their NRCs are mainstreamed. For those who are not mainstreamed, they remain in the NRCs for another year to be brought up to an age-appropriate class level, or the parents may enroll their children in an inappropriate grade level. Before the opening of the first NRC in Tiljala in 2002, CINI ASHA was working with children aged 5-9, and their mainstreaming rate was about 90%. However, CINI ASHA decided to target the older children, who were also hard-core child laborers. CINI ASHA cites the difficulties in educating and mainstreaming this particular group to explain why the mainstreaming rate has dropped to 50%. Community involvement The communitys role is essential in providing education for children, regardless of whether that is provided at an NRC, preparatory center, or a Shikshalaya Prakalpa. CINI ASHA never starts an NRC or other program without full community support. Figure 2, below, shows how CINI ASHA creates a cycle of interventions to enroll students in school. The community is integral at every step of the intervention cycle. Figure 2: Building a culture of educating children Source: CINI ASHA, 2003, p. 338. Starting with the community through raising awareness, the cycle repeats itself after students are enrolled in the formal school system. This figure represents a virtuous cycle, which will hopefully perpetuate throughout the generations as the future children of formerly mainstreamed students are enrolled in formal schools from the very beginning of their educational careers. CINI ASHA begins this cycle by conducting observations and informal discussions with residents in new communities to learn more about their social, economic and educational situations. CINI ASHA then contacts and establishes a relationship with a local youth club that is interested in the issues at hand. Youth Clubs Youth clubs are semi-organized groups of mainly young men in the slums. Their members gather to watch football on television and play games such as cards and pool. The youth clubs seem like unlikely partners for NFE interventions, but youth clubs play an important role in the slums, as they provide a venue where people talk about community issues. As a result, the youth club leaders often know a lot what is happening in the communities, and although they are not formal community leaders, they hold a certain degree of respect in the communities. The youth clubs have also donated their spaces to be used as NRCs, preparatory centers, and

coaching centers during the day. This was the case in three out of the four communities visited by the research team, and the small folded up wooden pool tables were evidence of how these spaces were still used as youth club centers in the evenings. One afternoon while the research team was at the Tiljala NRC, a parent meeting was held. Such meetings show that the space is more than a classroom; it is also a place where community members can gather and discuss various issues. Steps of Community Involvement The youth clubs help CINI ASHA carry out a survey of the community to determine the exact nature and size of the problem. If there are a number of out of school children that fall between the ages of 9 and 14, CINI ASHA and the community may choose to open an NRC or a preparatory center. The youth club then takes its members door-to-door to create community awareness about the problem of child labor and the importance of education for a childs future. The steps that CINI ASHA takes in the community can be summarized as follows: 1. Communities are sensitized to the idea of moving children out of work and into schools. 2. NRCs use non-formal methods to intensively prepare and move children into formal schools. 3. CINI ASHA continues to support these students with tutoring at the local coaching centers. 4. Staff works to ensure sustainability by creating community-based committees, involving community members in the NRCs and centers, and working with school officials and policy makers. The research team interviewed many CINI ASHA staff members, partner NGO staff members, youth club members, and children in the slum areas to determine how the communitys awareness levels were raised about the importance of education (step 1). The research team saw how the NRCs were functioning and preparing children for entrance into the formal schools through the use of the bridge course methodology (step 2). Many of the NRCs were located either nearby or adjacent to coaching centers, and after the formal schools were let out for the day, these centers filled up with students who worked on their homework (step 3). Performance toward meeting step 4 was mixed. Sustainability is a key issue of any development project. The communities are fairly involved in the running of the NRCs, which has proved to be helpful in keeping children enrolled and finding community volunteers to instruct the children. Not surprisingly, the major difficulty for sustainability is funding, as some of the inputs can be quite expensive. The issue of sustainability is discussed later in this paper on page 37. Working with school officials and policy makers seems to be one of the largest hurdles that CINI ASHA has yet to overcome. NRCs are locally grown and one part of a larger set of interventions As previously outlined on page 17, the NRC model developed out of years of trials by CINI ASHA to provide NFE to children: from preparatory centers to residential camps, coaching centers, NRCs, and Shikshalaya Prakalpas. These systems have organically developed in the various communities in which CINI ASHA works over the last 18 years. CINI ASHA also has a variety of other systems that support a combination of health, child rights, and education. Child Tracking System CINI ASHAs strategy to combat child labor is to ensure compulsory primary education for all by mainstreaming and retaining them in formal school. To this end, CINI ASHA has implemented the Child Tracking System (CTS) to track and increase student attendance. CTS is

done in partnership with the government, and it has been implemented in 34 Kolkata Primary School Councils (KPSC), 5 Kolkata Municipal Corporations (KMC) and 60 Shikshalayas with a computerized program. Children are given their own ID number, and the attendance of children is tracked on a daily basis. According to their attendance rates, students are classified into different priority levels. If mainstreamed students attendance rates are low, interventions are made. If the students attendance rate is less than 50%, he is a follow-up priority (FUP) 1. If the rate is between 50 and 80%, he is an FUP 2, and if the rate is more than 80%, he is an FUP 3. For example, if a student is an FUP 1, volunteers visit the students home to find out the reason of absence, and convince parents of the need for regular attendance to school. Satellite Points for Street Children CINI ASHA has also maintained their original focus on street children at Sealdah train station. They created satellite points where children could go before they were abused station. They try to get to the children before they settle in Sealdah, because it is difficult to extract a child and return him or her to their home as the lure of living at the station and making money is so great. Small community groups are formed to identify children in trouble, and then the community volunteers who run the satellite points meet the children. The community volunteers try to determine if the child is from the immediate area, and he or she tries to find the most appropriate intervention, which can include institutes run by the government or NGOs or even returning the child to his or her family. CINI ASHA is currently trying to equip other community groups so they can take this intervention a step further, by involving the porters on the train platforms and shopkeepers in the station. CINI ASHA then counsels the family to successfully reintegrate the child into the home, and then they try to mainstream the child. There are now 15 satellite points in Kolkata, mostly around the train station. Drop-in Centers, Half-way Houses, and Night Shelters To improve the quality of lives of marginalized children in Kolkata, CINI ASHA operates dropin centers, half way houses and night shelters to protect and prevent children from abuse and exploitation. The halfway house model is for the most abused, traumatized, and high-risk street children who stay at the two centers, one for boys and one for girls, from six months to one year. These halfway houses try to treat the children as they would be treated in a family, with food, shelter, and a supportive environment. The houses also offer psychological counseling, occupational therapy, a sick bay with health services, and they even have libraries. CINI ASHA provides health services, including free medicine, counseling, awareness programs and referral services, for street children and their families. Street children can stay at the drop-in centers during the day. Also, through counseling, traumas of the children are healed, and the students are prepared to receive education. Night shelters protect children from physical harassments at night, and provide education, counseling and nutrition. In addition, to protect atrisk children, CINI ASHA launched Child Line, which is a 24-hour emergency phone outreach program for children in distress. CINI ASHA reaches children who need protection and special care, through these child protection programs. Health CINI ASHA has a number of health programs that focus on infants, children, adolescents, and mothers. They also have an AIDS Hotline that provides information and counseling services via a computerized interactive voice response system in Bengali, Hindi, and English. Education and health reinforce each other. Improved health can contribute to school attendance, and healthier students can learn more efficiently. Educated students will provide better healthcare to

themselves and to their family as well. To this end, CINI ASHA provides healthcare services for children, adolescents, infants and mothers through its Urban Health Program.

Challenges and Barriers

Migrant families Kolkata is an economically vibrant city, and many individuals and families move to the slums to make money in the tanneries and production of handicrafts, like jute bags. Many of these families are from the neighboring Indian state of Bihar, where they continue to have homes and land that needs to be tended. Many of the children of migrant families become involved in child labor in the slums, and some find themselves involved in CINI ASHAs education programs aimed at mainstreaming them into the formal school system. However, it is very difficult to educate a child who leaves for months at a time with his or her family to go back to the village farm where they are not enrolled in school. When the child does return to the slum, he or she is even further behind the other children. CINI ASHA recognizes how difficult it is to educate and mainstream these children from migrant families, and they are struggling to find a solution.

Class & language

The NRC that uses Urdu as its medium of instruction is of particular interest, because of the lack of Urdu-medium schools in Kolkata. The Urdu-speaking community in Belgachia mostly comes from Bihar. The Hindi-based NRC in Tiljala also served a community with many of its residents from Bihar, but they are Hindi speakers. According to the U.S. Governments National Virtual Translation Center (2007), Hindi and Urdu are closely related languages, mostly set apart by their use of different alphabets. Hindi uses a Sanskrit alphabet, and Urdu uses the Arabic script. The differences between the languages become nearly meaningless in many regions of India, especially in the northern part of the Indian sub-continent where neither learned vocabulary nor writing are used. However, the differences between Hindi and Urdu become more important in the classroom. While the mostly Hindu children at the Tiljala NRC learn to read and write in the Hindi script, the children at the Belgachia NRC, who are mostly Muslim, learn the Urdu script. SPAN, the NGO running the NRC in Belgachia, citied the mismatch between the fact how many of Belgachias schools are Bengali-based, but the dominant language of Belgachia is Urdu. According to SPAN, there are only five primary schools and one secondary school for the entire population of Belgachia, comprised of approximately 100,000 Muslims. Most children are forced to drop out of school for lack of space. For those students that are able to stay in school, there are few teachers that speak Urdu and few learning materials, such as textbooks, written in Urdu. Although SPAN has been able to identify and recruit capable community volunteers to teach in its NRCs, it still has a problem because there is a lack of teaching materials in Urdu.

School fees & financial support

Under the Indian Constitution, education is free for every child, but in practice, sending a child to school can be quite expensive. Children in primary schools have to pay an admission fee, and

they have to pay for their books. CINI ASHA says that even at the lower primary level, it costs about Rs. 3,000 to send a child to school for one year. Fees then increase as you go up the educational ladder, to the point at the secondary level where students have to pay admission fees, purchase their school uniforms, and buy each book for every individual subject. CINI ASHA maintains that schools charge admission fees as a way of putting up walls, so certain children are effectively barred from enrolling. In order to work their way around the fees, CINI ASHA has vowed to provide need-based support through the upper secondary level of education if a child reaches upper primary school.

Maintaining a supportive environment for children once they are mainstreamed

CINI ASHA noted that many of the formal schools thought that children from the slums were simply not suited for education. There is some evidence of progress by the mere fact that formal schools are receiving prepared children back into their classes. CINI ASHA staff said that after children were readmitted, some teachers changed their attitudes toward students from the slums. CINI ASHA also said that they are doing a fair number of workshops with the formal schools, and that teachers are more child-friendly as a result. Generally, enrollment decreases as you look up the educational ladder. CINI ASHA claims that since they have pushed primary education models for the students for so many years, there are now more students in upper primary than ever before. Although the conditions of the formal schools are outside the confines of this research, the small group of mainstreamed children that were interviewed by the research team reported having been beaten and ignored by their teachers in the formal schools.

Can NGOs take the place of government for providing education and stopping child labor?
Our research has demonstrated that NGOs can play an integral part in improving education and reducing child labor, but only working in conjunction with government. The CINI ASHA nonresidential camp model as implemented shows promise as a component of the NGOs overall strategy to combat child labor, though it would be insufficient by itself. The model needs also to be tested for scalability, sustainability, and replicability if it is to be beneficial on a wider scale. Scalability The process of transforming a small-scale program to a more far-reaching one is difficult for most NGOs. A grassroots program that works successfully in a small target population with dedicated, tireless core staff is not readily expanded to a larger population. The very act of adapting a ground-up program into a top-down institutional bureaucracy leads to an almost inevitable watering-down of standards and quality (Wazir, 2002). Since this program is so community based, it would be unfeasible to scale up by expanding the capacity or scope of individual camps to cover larger areas. The only way to increase the number of children reached is to expand the NGOs presence neighborhood by neighborhood. In order to be maximally effective, CINI and other organizations must be patient as they expand these programs and enter new neighborhoods. It takes time to build the personal networks needed for community support of an NRC. Community demand for education, let alone overall social norms that condone or encourage child labor, will not change over night, and NGOs have to be willing

to invest the time and persistence necessary to build this community support. This can be difficult, however, in a donor environment that demands quick and calculable results. Whether expanding through government programs, NGO partners, or by their own staff, all parties must be very well trained if they are to assist in scaling-up the NRC model. They must be able not only to implement and supervise NRC centers and support structures, but also able to independently design curricula and implement programs based on the model and adapt it to the local context. To maintain quality, partner organizations should function as a consortium, conducting workshops and supervising each others work. Strong linkages with local government are also critical, both to ensure that the NRC curriculum is relevant to the needs of formal school entrants and to assist formal school teachers in meeting the needs of mainstreamed students. CINI ASHA has shown leadership in this area in the past, partnering with local NGOs, the Kolkata Municipal Corporation, the West Bengal government, and international organizations (Naqvi, 2003).

Sustainability
The key element of short-term sustainability is funding. India is rapidly moving from a recipient country to a donor country in terms of international development, and Kolkata is in the midst of a massive transformation to becoming a more information-based economy. This explosion of capital should provide local NGOs with a potential source of donations from individuals and corporate philanthropists. The NGOs administering these programs should explore different types of linkages with corporate entities, beyond traditional donor/recipient relationships. The slums in many parts of Kolkata are full of lively economic activity. Local and international firms had a visible presence in the slums, from mobile telephone kiosks and convenience store refrigerators to promoters giving out samples of consumer products. Mobilized communities could, for example, exchange neighborhood access for NRC sponsorship. The role that international donors play is critical to sustainable success of this program. Immediate monitoring and evaluation needs may conflict somewhat with the longer-term goals of the intervention. Donors must be flexible and cognizant of the time necessary to build a program from the ground up. It is also important that donor funding go to startup and initial training costs only, rather than ongoing costs. The experience of the Peyarabagan camp demonstrates the danger of donor funds going to program maintenance, and it is possible that this NRC will not survive past the end of REACH India in August 2007. The long-term goal of the NRC program is its own obsolescence. NRCs should not be viewed as a permanent fixture of community education, but a short-term solution to a temporary education gap. Successful NRC programs should ultimately transition to coaching centers that supplement formal schooling and improve retention.

Replicability
Among the key factors in the success of CINI ASHAs program so far have been its deep ties with the culture and communities of Kolkata. Transplanting the model to other countries, or even other locations in India, would be difficult. CINI ASHA has experienced some of this in their

prior attempts to provide technical support and capacity building to smaller urban towns in West Bengal and Bihar. The organization encountered initial mistrust and skepticism from local NGO and district leaders who felt they had nothing to gain from a Kolkata-based NGO. It took CINI almost two years of relationship-building to build trust and establish linkages in many areas (Naqvi, 2003). The holistic nature of CINI ASHAs program has also been critical to its success in meeting needs of urban children. The organization has modified its program several times over the past decade to meet the differing needs of children in Kolkata, needs that differ from ward to ward and neighborhood to neighborhood. Organizational flexibility of this degree is not readily transferable, but must be built within an organization through staff experience. There are four interconnected elements critical to the NRC program itself that can be replicated in a different context. First is the child-centered learning pedagogy, which, as CINI ASHAs work demonstrates, is very effective when adapted to the local education needs of the community. Second is the community involvement and collaboration needed to develop an informal education program and identify children in need of a child labor intervention. Third is the collaboration with local government and the formal school system that will allow children to be mainstreamed into a system that will meet their needs. Finally, the implementer must build and sustain the institutional capacity to design and implement this intervention and adapt it to fit changing needs.

Is education successful in combating child labor?

Education-based interventions are an integral part of the overall fight against child labor, but they alone cannot solve the problem. The factors that underlie an individual or household decision to work rather than attend school are extremely complex, and education quality and access are only two of these factors. The economic, social, legal, and entitlement factors may in themselves trump human capital factors in a neighborhood or an individual family. However, education can provide some of the tools necessary to address these additional factors, and its utility should not be overlooked as part of a child labor intervention. The fight against child labor is also tied securely to the Millennium Development Goal of universal primary education. The closer a country gets to 100% enrollment, the more difficult it is to achieving that goal. It is the children on the margins of society, who have slipped through multiple cracks, who must be reached in order to truly claim that the goal of Education For All has been reached. The work of CINI ASHA and its partners in Kolkata has demonstrated that a motivated NGO working in conjunction with government can reach many of these unreachable children.

RECOMMENDATIONS
Recommendations for a follow-up study
At least one native speaker of minority languages used in communities and NRCs is needed in the research team for a follow-up study. When the research team conducted focus group interviews or observed lessons of NRCs, lack of an ability to understand the language was a barrier to the study. What participants of the focus group interviews said was interpreted through summarizing or paraphrasing. Particularly, in one NRC, the focus group interviews were interpreted in several steps, that is, from Urdu to Bengali, then, Bengali to English and vise versa. In the process of several step interpretations, there were possibilities that interpreters might miss some information or the nuances. Also, it was often interpreted by supervisors of

NRCs, which may have affected the responses to interview questions. A native speaker of the language of the community in the follow-up research team will help do the research without missing important information or involving someone who can affect interviewees responses to interview questions. A follow-up study needs to longitudinally examine changes of perceptions of NRC stakeholders. The research team gathered the data at one time by looking at current perceptions of communitybased volunteers, parents, students, and community members on the benefits of attending NRCs or formal school. Although current perceptions of the NRCs stakeholders were essential to gain a holistic picture of the educational interventions to combat child labor in NRCs, the follow-up study needs to be a longitudinal one which examines whether there are changes in NRC students and their parents perceptions before and after the students attend NRCs, and mainstreamed students perceptions before and after they are mainstreamed. A follow-up study may examine what kinds of jobs the mainstreamed students have after graduating from formal school and how the education affects their lives compared to their peers who have not received any education. In addition, a follow-up study needs to have more samples. The research team conducted a focus group interview with only four mainstreamed students at one NRC. Therefore, this result may not be generalized to students mainstreamed from other NRCs. Therefore, more samples in more NRCs are needed for a follow-up study. Quantitative data which indicates students academic achievements are needed in a follow-up study. The data which the research team collected were mostly qualitative in nature. The researchers did not collect quantitative data, such as students levels of literacy or numeracy by testing them. Even though they have positive feeling towards attending NRCs or formal school, perceptions and actual outcomes may be different. A follow-up study needs to longitudinally and periodically collect quantitative data to evaluate students progress in terms of their learning outcomes. Particularly, the study should gather time-series data about mainstreamed students academic achievements to see if they catch up with their peers, who started their formal education from the beginning of grade 1. According to the results, Coaching Centers can more actively help students who need back-up supports in adjusting to formal school system. A follow up study needs to examine the effectiveness of the bridge course methodology. The NRCs which the research team visited applied a reduced curriculum focusing on a small number of subjects. One NRC teaches students six subjects, that is, Bengali, math, English, geography, history, and science. The other NRC focuses on math, Urdu, and English and teaches other subjects only a few hours per week. Although teaching a reduced curriculum help students prepared to enter formal school in a short period of time, a further study are necessary to evaluate the learning outcomes of the fast-paced teaching and learning methods with a reduced curriculum. For instance, if students do not learn science at NRCs and are mainstreamed into formal school at grade 5, can they catch up with their peers in the subject without having difficulties? The result of the follow up study would be a guideline of curriculum in NRCs.

Recommendations for CINI ASHA

Individual students should have learning materials, and they should be their primary language. Students at Khanaberia NRC have their own books, and they said that it is helpful to them because they can read books and review what they learned at school after going back home. In another NRC, even though the language of instruction of the NRC is Bengali, an official

language of West Bengal, they do not have textbooks. They share books with others at class and return the books to their teachers after class. Teachers give students homework to help students study and assess their progress. However, because students do not have books, teachers give students homework like writing numbers 1 to 200 and then correcting it. In NRCs whose language of medium is not Bengali, having individual textbooks in their own language is essential to accelerate their learning. In addition, NRCs for linguistic minorities need to adopt a pdagogie convergente model, which was successfully used by Save the Children US in Mali. Such a model results in increased respect for the local language, increased access to education, improved quality and promotion rates for basic education, and enhanced functional bilingualism (Glassman et al. 2003). The Belgachia NRC, whose language of instruction is Urdu, and the Tiljala NRC, whose language of instruction is Hindi, need to teach in their local primary language and transit to Bengali later. For linguistic minorities, the scarcity of secondary schools which teach in their local languages is a huge barrier to their further study. By teaching students in their local language and later in Bengali, this pdagogie convergente model eases students transitions into formal schools, whose medium is almost exclusively Bengali, and prevents them from dropping out of school because of the media of instruction. There needs to be greater coordination with other NGOs for adult literacy and vocational training services. Most of the parents interviewed had no schooling, and many of them could read and write their names only. Given the fact that Kolkata has the highest literacy rate of any district in the state of West Bengal, with 81% literacy and 78% female literacy, parents in slum areas where the research team visited are far behind the other adults of Kolkata. Adult literacy classes should be provided in the future, and NRCs can be used as classrooms. Literacy increases accesses of individuals, families, and communities to educational, health, political, and economic opportunities and helps overcome poverty, malnutrition, and unemployment (UNESCO, 2005). In addition, adult vocational trainings for the parents will increase levels of their incomes. Currently, the parents are engaged in fishing, waste salvage, tannery, leather making, jute bag making, and domestic work. Adult vocational trainings will provide them with skills more relevant to the changing world, and in turn, lead them to a better paid job.