The Pratham Council for Vulnerable Children (PCVC) is the child protection vertical of Pratham with the vision of ‘Every Child's Rights Protected, Every Child in School and Learning Well.’
Started in 2001, PCVC’s focus has evolved from rescue and rehabilitation of child labourers and children in difficult situations to adopting a rights-based approach towards protection and safeguarding the rights
of children.
CONTEXT
PCVC started as an outreach program with extensive intervention work in the urban communities of Mumbai consisting of poor migrant families.
We identified thousands of working children between 6 and 18 years of age, engaged in industries like bag-making, shoe-making, cap-making, zari, gold polishing etc. Most of these children were migrants primarily belonging to Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan.
The outreach’s major intervention was to rescue children in coordination with the police and the Labour Department and persuading employers not to employ children for work.
Extensive work was then carried out in both source states and destination states of child labourers to mitigate child labour and help repatriated children receive available compensation and
rehabilitation facilities.
Over the years, PCVC strengthened its interventions, reaching not only to child labourers but also children on move (unsafe migration of children, runaway children, street children), children with disability, children affected by natural or man-made calamities, children in institutions, children suffering from substance abuse, children in conflict with law, child survivors of sexual abuse and children belonging to the most
marginalised communities.
Through its work, PCVC strives to reduce the vulnerabilities so as to create a safety net for children by strengthening the child protection mechanisms through partnerships with government and non-government organisations.
REACH & SCALE
PCVC's activities extend to seven states in the country – Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Telangana and Uttar Pradesh.
In 2022-23, PCVC covered 54 blocks, 18 districts (rural areas) and 730 communities in 9 cities (urban areas). Overall, PCVC reaches around 300,000 children annually through its direct and indirect interventions.
APPROACH
PCVC strategy includes direct work with children and families in vulnerable communities. Indirect work as a resource organisation involves training of different stakeholders working in the field of child protection and partnership with necessary government departments to address these concerns.
PCVC addresses the issues of child rights through multipronged interventions. PCVC’s overall focus is on prevention, remediation, rehabilitation, policy advocacy and documentation for evidence-based practice.
One of the key programs of PCVC is to rescue child labourers from exploitative situations. The aim is to repatriate these children back to their homes and seek rehabilitative measures to sustain them in their local and home settings. To facilitate this, PCVC has established various inter-state connections with the respective government departments, at both source and receiving ends. PCVC also works at important source and receiving points at railway stations in order to mitigate unsafe migration and trafficking of children as a major prevention operation.
On the rehabilitation front, PCVC provides educational sponsorship for the rescued child labourers. This is for the children who attend school on a regular basis (up to 70% attendance) and their progress is monitored by PCVC staff in consultation with the schools. Another rehabilitation initiative is the Family Assistance Project which provides livelihood to the families of these vulnerable children to ensure the sustenance of children in education net and protects them from getting into any harmful practices like child labour. In the past, PCVC has run residential shelters for rescued child labourers in their home state as a demonstration of best practices for the state.
A crucial prevention program is the Child Rights Help Desk which is set up at various locations to address the concerns of child rights and for local community members to seek redressal for the same. Child rights sessions are also conducted in schools as well as in the community to spread awareness on the child protection concerns.
PCVC also engages in national advocacy-level interventions. These interventions range from establishing inter-state coordination between various state governments and pushing the issue of child rights and protection to a higher priority on their agenda and working towards influencing significant
policy decisions.
CONTACT
PCVC is a program under Pratham Mumbai Education Initiative. For more details write to us at info@pcvc.org or visit http://www.pcvc.org/