Broadening Our Understanding
At the time of MAYA's inception in 1989, MAYA sought to address child labour and children's rights by programming initiatives aimed at working children and at-risk children. As a result of continual processes of reflection and learning over the years, the organisation has increasingly realised that though the primary cause of child labour appears to be economic poverty, this immediate interpretation fails to capture the complexity of the issues on the ground. In reality, poverty is a state of deprivation that includes limited opportunities for the poor to articulate their needs, to improve their capabilities, and to access to resources.
Poverty is Systemic
MAYA believes that poverty is systemic, rather than individual, in nature. Poverty simply cannot be understood as a problem affecting the poor as individuals. A comprehensive understanding of poverty requires acknowledging the structural mechanisms that perpetuate it. For example, certain policies and traditions preclude participation of the poor, woman, dalits, and adivasis in decision making. Lack of access to skills for earning sustainable livelihoods cannot be blamed on poor individuals. It is an institutional problem. Inadequate market access and pricing structures for entire economic sectors are likewise broad issues that cannot respond to the actions of people working alone.
Learning is a Continual Process
For MAYA, the process of self-reflection pervades programing as well as MAYA's own organisational development. Learning happens at the individual, group, and institutional level, and is integral to all work. Through a process of reflection, time and time again, communities and collectives of the working poor come to understand better their the nature of the systems impacting their lives, the educational system, and their livelihoods. MAYA staff engage in similar processes of reflection in order to realign MAYA's goals and programmes with a more comprehensive understanding of the lives of the working poor, public and private institutions, political realities, and globalisation.
Implications for Programming
Taking into account that poverty is a structual problem, MAYA believes that addressing child labour & poverty through micro-level interventions such as one-time income-generation programmes, short-term vocational training, or compulsory enrollment of child labourers in formal schools, will have only a limited impact. As a result, MAYA has attempted to develop programs that will address the root causes of poverty at the systemic level, rather than serving as band-aids to assist only a handful of individuals. MAYA believes that in order to transform the systems creating poverty, there must be institutional mechanisms for the poor to articlulate their needs, to earn decent and sustainable livelihoods, and to have access to continuous training and education to support personal and occupational growth. These threads run through all of MAYA's Right to Quality Education and the Labour and Livelihoods programming regarding the, from Prajayatna to MAYA Organic to LabourNet.
When all people are able to collectively exercise their rights and exert power over the
institutions affecting their lives, MAYA's interventions will no longer be necessary!
