Kids Caring for Kolkata

With more than 15 million people crammed into its metropolitan area, Kolkata is India’s third-largest city. It’s also one of the fastest-growing, with new migrants arriving to look for work every day. ‘Informal labour’ makes up nearly half of Kolkata’s economy – roadside hawkers, rag pickers, and other people who don’t have a guaranteed income each day. A third of Kolkata’s residents live in slums. No wonder Mother Teresa picked Kolkata to live in and serve the poor.

Recently 45 children from Christian projects working in these slums came together for a one-day workshop called “Why should we have rights?” In areas like Kolkata’s overpopulated slums, the needs of children often get overlooked or pushed aside for more pressing matters like feeding the family or finding a proper latrine (normally impossible). But that doesn’t mean these children’s rights aren’t just as important of those of kids in the developed world, or in the richer parts of Kolkata. And that’s just what they learned.


Viva’s city-wide network in Kolkata designed the workshop to bring children from many different projects to meet new friends, and together come up with new ideas on how to advocate for child rights to the adults in their community. We don’t just want adults running the show in our networks – though of course properly trained adults are essential to running a good project, church or network! Viva believes the ones with the most at stake, the children, have ideas and valuable opinions that need to be heard too.

The first activity was a “theatre of the oppressed”, a doleful name for a doleful activity. The children got into groups and composed skits to demonstrate in a dramatic sense the way children are oppressed or denied their rights in the slums. Seeing their peers act out misery that’s a daily occurrence for some of these children or their friends helped to solidify their desire to improve life in Kolkata’s slums.

It was important for us to make sure the children knew the difference between rights and desires. While every child has the right to be fed, they don’t have the right to eat ice cream every day! This sparked some interesting and thoughtful discussions about the limits of rights, a topic that’s often ignored when children’s rights are the topic of conversation.

After this the children watched a film about a slum child living in India’s largest city and financial capital, called “Salaam Mumbai”. We had prepared a range of discussion topics on this issue too, but they were hardly necessary. Most of our attendees could identify with the main character – the difficulties of living in run-down houses with no running water or sanitation, avoiding street crime, dealing with discrimination, and watching their parents try desperately to come up with money to feed them (if they have parents at all) aren’t strange experiences for these kids.

The afternoon easily rolled on into a session on the issues facing all the areas where our delegates came from. Children living in Kolkata’s slums regularly brave everything from streets filthy with excrement, to harsh forms of sexual discrimination, to being kept out of school to beg – on a daily basis. Obstacles to proper human development differ based on the slum you live in. Some slums have more problems with disease; others are rife with brothels and the dangers of trafficking; others are more likely to see children sucked into forced labour on the streets as beggars and in the dumps as rag-pickers. Having the children talk about these things is a great way to generate ideas about how to stay safe from them, or even overcome them completely!

In the end, the experience was so helpful that the children took the initiative to form an ongoing group, which they named Care Youth Group. They’re planning to meet every three months to hatch plans to better their communities, advocate among adults and community leaders for the rights they learned about, and improve the situations in the projects they represent. Just like in Uganda and Bolivia, Viva’s busy harnessing the power of children using their creative geniuses together, in order to permanently change their neighbourhoods!

One of the best things about this workshop was that it didn’t just help the kids make new friends and come up with ideas. It also gave them the confidence to stand up for themselves in a positive and constructive way, something they don’t easily learn in the slum environment. I can’t wait to see what they come up when they have their first three-month meeting.


~ Steven, Viva India Network Co-ordinator, Kolkata


Learn more about child advocacy at www.viva.org/advocates