A New Generation of Slum Children

As a Network Consultant for Viva India, one of the best parts of my job is visiting the networks Viva works with and seeing what all the projects are doing. Recently I was on a whirlwind tour of India, travelling from Bangalore in the south to Vijayawada in the southeast, and then all the way up to Dehradun in the Himalayas, and finally back to Delhi where I work. It helped me to remember what a huge, diverse and beautiful country India is … but also how much work there is to be done.

I’d like to share some good news from Dehradun. This is one of India’s oldest cities and is home to half a million people today. It’s snuggled between the feet of the Himalayas and the vast plains of northern India, surrounded by the Ganges and Yamuna rivers. Imagine coming from the hot Indian plains and arriving in a place surrounded by forests, mountains and cool rivers! Or, if you like wildlife, you could look around for tigers, snow leopards, cheetahs, or Himalayan bears.


Despite its idyllic setting, Dehradun has its share of slums and poverty. The people living in the slums are largely migrants who have had to resort to begging and rag-picking, and who can rarely allow themselves the luxury of thinking about an education for their children. As a result, about 50% of the slum children never attend school, and those who do typically drop out or else fare badly in their classes.

Part of the problem is that the children have to go out and beg or look for scraps, to supplement their parents’ income. Those who aren’t sent out to work are kept in to work in a different way, taking care of the house or their younger brothers and sisters. Often girls are given the very dangerous task of going into the hills, which are inhabited by all the exotic animals I mentioned before, to collect firewood. Whatever they’re up to, the children are certainly not in school.

That’s why our network of projects in Dehradun has started an evening tutoring programme in the slums. It started up in June, and it already has 100 students! Rather, they have 100 students - there are actually four different tutoring classrooms, one in each of Dehradun’s four slum districts. Each classroom has a small library, and classes are held for two hours every weekday evening. We hold them late in the day so that any child can come – whether they’ve been at school during the day and need help with their homework (hard to get from often uneducated parents), or whether they’ve spent the day looking for scraps around town.

Running these classes together has had a great effect not just on the children attending, but also on the projects running them. The network is being strengthened by this process of working together so that now individual projects are learning more about one another, and how they can both support and be helped by others working in their community.

I met up with the leaders of these classrooms when I was in Dehradun. It was so uplifting to hear their stories – how against all the odds they’ve been able to establish not just one but four classrooms throughout the city, assemble a committee of locals to supervise the teachers and the students, and pull together enough material for four libraries … all with the budgets and time constraints of churches and orphanages.

There are 20 million children in India who are not in school. The problem is much bigger than just Dehradun. Wherever there’s poverty or sexual discrimination, there are children kept home to work, or sent into the cities to beg, or forced into bonded labour. Against such a problem, I feel terribly small! But it’s not just me working against this current. There are thousands of people and projects in India, big and small, working to bring children a better future. How much more can we do if we come together? We can share resources, receive training together, share information, and create rules and best practices to operate on. More children would receive better help, where and when they needed it.

Living in India myself and seeing the scope of the problem firsthand, I know that the only way the problem will ever be solved is through the united efforts of those who care about children. That’s why Viva’s city-wide networks of projects and churches are the perfect way to bring help and love to children at risk. As for these Dehradun tutoring classes, the best part is not just that the children are getting some education. It’s that they’re being shown, in a very practical way, that they have value – they are valuable enough for many adults to give up their time and energy to educate and care for them. With that knowledge, they’re being encouraged not just to accept what life has given them, but to strive for great things. What better education is there than that?


~ Steven Christian, Network Co-ordinator, Viva India


Interested in how city-wide networks are brought together? Visit http://www.viva.org/City-wide/

Find out how the Asha Forum is improving the lives of India’s children at http://www.viva.org/Asha/