Family Education For Poverty Reduction Among Tribal Community

AID - Jharkhand (Ranchi Chapter )

Engaging in different forms of work has been part of the culture of tribal life. For instance, picking different forest produce, wood cutting, herding cattle, undertaking different agricultural operation and domestic work are part of the work life of many tribal children. In many areas, due to the influence of basic education, this culture was shaken. But, alas! in places such as Erky in Ranchi
district, this culture has been still continuing. The reason being that the school system in Erky is in a state of anarchy. Most of the government schools in the area are still in a state of hibernation. The teachers being outsiders and alien to the tribal language - Mundari, thousands of children are still in
darkness without seeing the light of hope. Basic education system is almost collapsed here, though the talk of education, as fundamental right is part of the debate in many parts of India. For the Erky
children, neither the education has brought any burden to the children, as is the case in urban schools, nor the school system is instilling confidence to the poor. Amidst islands of educational affluence, Erky stands a place of sterile education. Access to basic education is still a distant dream to many poor Munda children.

Being a remote area, without any infrastructure such as road, transport, other forms of communication and health facilities, education is yet to catch up in Erky. Without any opportunities for learning, the only way out for them is to engage in productive activities to be useful to them and their community. This system further deprives the working children. In many ways, children’s life was doomed and is forced to live without even the basic life skills for them. This further reflected in terms of very poor health with high incidence of malnutrition, malaria and water born diseases.In this state of distressing affairs, AID through its unit TRACE initiated a project for activation of government schools as a means
of suppressing child labour and enhancing the life of the poor working children. It set up 30 quality education centres (QEC) which are closely linked with existing government schools. These QECs are
the nodal point of meeting of all the working children. It serves as a link between parents, children and school teachers. In the first phase, it provided alternative basic education to working children
throughout the day. Simultaneously, it conducted school enrolment drives, school campaigns, strengthened the school teacher and community links and school improvement efforts with the
participation of Village Mundas (traditional leaders), villagers and parents. As part of the health packages, health awareness, health check up and preventive measures against water born diseases,
malaria and malnutrition were taken. The first phase of the work led to activation of more than 7
non-functioning schools. It further contributed for community monitoring of schools and consequently the school system improved. Besides to this, 876 children had access to basic education and health services. Consequently, their health status improved with evidence of reduction of water born diseases, malaria and malnutrition.

In the second phase, further work is underway to provide supplementary education to the school going children. Further in places where schools are not functioning, it is supporting the community to run schools with their contribution and full participation. AID is helping them in training, curriculum development and campaign for basic education. Further effort is on to engage village women in productive activities as an effort to improve their livelihood. We seek further support in its mission of
education for empowerment.