Education
Strategy
Deprived Urban Children (DUC)
The challenge of development for the urban poor is already huge, and is likely to take on enormous proportions based on the projections that by 2025, half of the country’s population would be living in urban slums. Education poses its own set of challenges, especially as most slums are highly underserved in terms of schools (not taking into account the substandard private schools that dot these areas). In addition, the insecurity of tenancy and livelihoods of the urban poor, results in their moving quite frequently from one location to another; as a result, children drop out of school. For all these complex reasons, there are huge numbers of children in urban slums who are out of school.
Communities in slums are not organized, and in fact extremely difficult to organize, given their instability and non-homogeneity, among other things. Their work hours are too long, and children remain alone and unattended for major part of the day, contributing to serious care and security issues. The 74th amendment to the Indian Constitution, towards creating effective local governance structures in slums, has not taken off to desired levels. Some communities have neither space nor forums to articulate their education needs, and to engage in an organized manner with the government on fulfilling these needs.
With much of the resources and attention going to rural India over the last several decades, the issue of urban poverty, including education of children living in urban slums, has clearly remained in the back seat. Although there is a body of experience available on education of deprived urban children, in terms of effective strategies for universal coverage, quality, and equity, there is still a long way to go. Given the looming challenge, AIF proposes to give high priority to work on the issue of education of deprived urban children.