Inspiring Stories - B T B

BTB - a low income area - adjacent to Banerghatta Road in the city of Bangalore , till a few years ago, faced a predominant culture of older siblings staying at home to look after younger ones, coupled with a sheer lack of facilities to take care of the learning needs of the young. The history of high employment of child labour, especially in the surrounding garages and petty shops only compounded the propensity of children to either enter the workforce at an early age or dropout of school on enrolment, like many neighbouring slums and low-income areas.

It was in this context that a dialogue was initiated with the parents and other community members to address the issue of early childhood education as a priority; building on their inherent capacities and existing experience in this area. Following several discussions, a few community members took the initiative to start a preschool in their area. The space, a community-allocated room (a Madrasa) was identified to house the preschool for the whole day; providing a learning and stimulating environment for the children and respite for their parents who are engaged in coolie work, beedi/agarbathi rolling or in petty vending. Despite their daily struggle to earn a stable and secure income, these community members were able to enroll other parents to support their children's learning.

Since its initiation in 1998, the BTB school has steadily built its capacities in providing an enabling learning environment to its children. The teacher has been consistently trained by the facilitators on a monthly basis on aspects of-child learning, child care, interactions with parents & community members and with external support organizations. Over the years more than 250 children and their families have benefited through this facility. The local community with a high incidence of child labour has gradually been enrolled into the culture of early child care and education, critical to the child's development.

The parents have continually strengthened the school through- allowing the usage of their home spaces on non availability of the community space, substituted for the teachers in their absence, ensured regular payment of fees etc. This active participation of the parent's and community through the years has now evolved into more sustainable linkages with the school. For instance the parents now have a formal body of four members who are responsible for monitoring the school, planning & budgeting for the school requirements, substituting for the teacher, defining children's learning outcomes and teacher responsibilities, and most importantly accessing supplementary resources for enhancing the school's capacity for providing an enabling learning environment for their children.

The Early Childhood Care and Education initiative presently reaches out to over 4500 children through 175 community-owned preschools, similar to BTB School , in the low income areas of Bangalore Urban and Bangalore Rural districts.The initial years experienced the organisation supporting all supplementary costs for the preschools through accessing resources from private donors. It saw us eliciting more of community participation, which manifested in various ways such as enrolling local self help groups and federations to partake in the activities of the preschool. Over time, the focus to create more sustainable longer-term partnerships and establish a sense of social responsibility between the stakeholders has led MAYA to build further linkages between the parents, the local community and other supportive institutions-government, individual and other donors.