Child care
'Let the child be the scriptwriter, the director, and the actor in his play'
It has been found that children in slums, where both parents go out to work are the most vulnerable. Their basic needs like food, education, and health care get neglected. This causes serious consequences as most of the children in the slums suffer from malnutrition and do not complete their secondary school education and get dropped out of school.
Proaction Foundation (PAF) runs two Day Care Centres (DCCs) in Thane slums for children whose mother work in the textile industry. These DCCs work with a unique concept and are not like typical daycare centres where children stay for the whole day. These children come from poor families where both parents work in the informal sector and are unable to take care of their children as they have to go and work every day to arrange two meals for their families.
The DCCs open for children at 9 am and close at 6 pm and runs for 5 days a week. Most of the children are school-going children, the school functions in two shifts in Thane - in the morning as well as in the evening. Therefore, children who have evening shift school come to DCC in the morning while those children who have morning shift school come afternoon.
At DCC, children get help and support for their supplementary educational needs. All children who come to the centre are also provided nutritional supplements and micronutrients daily. The trained staff keeps the children engaged in recreational and other learning activities apart from providing study support.
Children participate and celebrate the festivals and important days at DCC as it is a way to learn about our culture, great people and their work. Festivals are not just mere celebrations of a day as all of them carry a story behind them and offer a lot of moral values that can be a great influence on any child.
Our children are the future, and they must be educated about the environment and the ongoing concerns related to it. Through creating green practices and raising awareness about environmental issues, children will learn about where our food is coming from, how our air is becoming polluted, and what needs to be done to save our planet.
We are on the mission to create a healthy, green, and clean planet through tree plantations. We work with a vision of developing a lush-green and bio-diverse sustainable world for the future generation by igniting a huge environmental revolution through trees. The objective of Proaction Foundation’s Go Green Project is to inspire students to move beyond theories and textbooks and concentrate solely on ‘doing’ it is an environmental extra-curriculum program directed to subtly sensitizing students towards fellow inhabitants of our planet and to the environment through hands-on and through-provoking activities. This project is about a school with green backyard orchards, agroforestry, vegetable with kitchen gardens, a herbal garden, a school that is clean and green, a school that promotes environmental conversations, protection, and green extra curriculum projects and activities.
We initiated the Go Green Project for students of Raisina Bengali Senior Secondary School, C.R. Park, New Delhi through tree plantation, sensitization, awareness, and by providing saplings (Ashoka, palm, bottle palm, amla, kadam, and curry patta) and tree guards. Before initiating the tree plantation and school gardening project, the Proaction team selected 50 students from class 7th to class 12th to form the ‘Eco Club’ in school. An essay and drawing competition were organized for these students on the theme “Protect our Environment against pollution and Global Warming”. The jury committee selected the three best drawings and essays and felicitated them with the prize, followed by a musical concert by the students. Eco Club members and staff initiated the planting of saplings in the school garden with the participation of all students of this school. This kind of project promotes children to develop their skills, creative thinking, and understanding of their social responsibility. The Proaction team also motivated students to take forward this initiative to the family and community level by creating awareness and sensitizing community people about the importance of the environment and the benefits of trees. The engagement of children at the community level build stronger community bonds and helps in building a relationship with people.