In order to improve young migrant children’s living conditions, Aide et Action initiated a project in 2014. The project provides care, learning and safe environment to young migrants at worksites through 67 Child Care and Learning Centres. The project also focuses on providing crèche facilities in the worksites of Bhopal and Chennai attended by 290 children who are below the age of 3 years. The crèches provided opportunities for development of gross and fine motor skills and language skills to the infants during the most critical stage of their life. Taking a holistic approach for early childhood development Aide et Action addressed the issues of nutrition, health, lack of access to basic services by young migrant, pregnant & lactating women at worksites, along with learning and growth issues, mainstreaming of school going children and policy issues.
With an objective to demonstrate a replicable decent housing model that ensures safety and provides healthy dwelling environment for the children and families living in the brick kiln 24 dwelling houses (12 each), community and child friendly spaces, backyard, low height boundary wall and a toilet block were constructed in the brick kiln. The space for construction of the houses was provided by the facility owner. This experiment successfully resulted in replication by the worksite owners to ensure migrant families a decent living condition.
The learning from the CCLCs and the demonstration housing model are shared with the government officials both at the national and state level. The state governments of the four cities have provided nutrition supplements, immunisation and healthcare services to the young migrants in the age group of 3-6 years while the children in the age group of 6-14 years are linked to a government school near to the worksites.
This project would continue its ongoing intervention by re-emphasizing and expanding its operations in the cities of Bhopal, Bhubaneswar, Chennai and Hyderabad with a more focus on policy advocacy and taking quality early learning to scale with improving young migrants’ living condition.
