Butterflies: Empowering the most मर्गीनालिज़द

Hello again!
This was a touching moment to find Arman with us who graduated from the streets to be able to run a community-catering service and gave us a taste of elegance through the lunch packs they served! Thanks butterflies!!
Yet, Ruchira's presentation on "Butterflies: Empowering the most marginalized" made us shake our inertia as we understood how the very young citizens of our modern society have to fight the winters bare-bodied with some concoction that'll keep them going at work and at life. Not to be put down, the butterflies live with respect by managing their accounts through a self -run Children's Development Bank. Plan_of_Action_for_Working_Children_in_Delhi_-_Final.pdf
The butterflies also make the best of their busy schedule through:

1. Alternative Journalism: Newsletters like South Asian Children's Times & National Children's Times and Radio Jamia Broadcasts.
   
2. Bal Samities - Children's Council : To follow democratic approach where Children's Rights and their economic self dependence have been the main concerns. In order to keep the economics of livelihood realistic, it has been important for them to distinguish between "child labour" and "child work" .
   
3. Alternative education includes mobile teachers with their teaching kits packed in a trunk holding classes in parks, by the roadside, at street corners, market places, railway stations and bus terminals.
   
4. Facilities for Physical protection :Butterflies support a non-institutional approach unless they have to use the night shelters to protect themselves from various kinds of physical abuse. Participative decision making by the street children on Child Right issues taken up by the Govt. has been illuminating.
   
5. Many of the efforts have been designed by the children for the children.
   

By the age of six, they have seen it all... Just in case you see a street child in distress contact Child line toll free number: 1098.

We definitely need to do more, may be through partnerships in sharing skills and avenues of generating meaningful employment. The laughing trees are already moving. Just in case, you wish to be a stakeholder, try and please get in touch with Ruchira. Also, do write in your comments to help us plan more action in the future.