Content area
Full text
In 1969 Meera Mahadevan, a social worker, observed neglected children on the construction site of the Gandhi Centenary Exhibition Pavilion in Delhi and decided to do something about it. She built a makeshift shelter on the site, providing the barest rudiments of care. This was the first mobile crèche (here crèche means "day nursery"). Mobile Crèches was founded on one woman's determination to change life for India's most vulnerable children.
Within its first decade, Mobile Crèches' network of child care centers spread from construction sites to urban slums and from the capital city of Delhi to the commercial and cultural centers of Mumbai and Pune. Funding for this expansion came from individual donations, funding agencies, and some support from construction contractors. As a result of lobbying by Mobile Crèches, a program called Crèches for Working and Ailing Mothers was started in 1970.
My relationship with Mobile Crèches goes back to when I was a year old, when I came to the crèche. Today, I fully participate in all activities at the center, be it sports day or festivals. I work with a non-governmental organization.
- Sanjay, Alumnus
What defines Mobile Crèches?
What sets Mobile Crèches apart from other organizations working with children in India is our dual focus on the young child and the migrant child-the most vulnerable and invisible. Mobile links us to the migrant; our construction site centers are temporary and run during the time of construction. Crèche binds us to the young child from infancy through age six, although at construction sites we work with children up to 12 years of age.
Statistics on child health and child survival prove that despite scientific evidence and economic rationale, societies often neglect our most precious resource-the young child-at the time of greatest vulnerability and promise. Those who work with the children of migrant parents know that the child unseen by state policy is the child unreached by programs and left behind by development. The few government programs that exist serve settled communities with stable voting populations; migrant children fall through the cracks.
Migrant workers and their children
Migrant workers, who usually come from poor rural villages, build the office towers, shopping complexes, and luxury homes that are laying the foundations for India's economic success;...