Our Ambition 2030 is to “lead a child rights movement for and with children to create an India where children have a protected, healthy, enriched, equitable and inclusive childhood”

Bal Raksha Bharat India prioritizes issues of urban children most impacted by inequality and discrimination in its vision 2024 and strategic framework (2022-24). Urban programmes and projects essentially focus on the well-being of girls and boys living in the vulnerable pockets and facing challenges for their well-being in cities and towns.
Our urban programming efforts are informed by the evidences on the issues faced by the children through participatory research with them and other concerned stakeholders. This informs the robust urban programming and its participatory implementation for upholding the rights of children and striving for inclusive and equitable urban development.

Our Urban Programming Strategic Approach

Amplifying the existing good programming practices: Some solutions to challenges faced by children in cities can be addressed using the same or similar approaches as we have already implemented on the ground. Gender sensitive and gender transformative interventions are integral part of our programming to empower girls and bring forth their pressing issues with participatory action-oriented solutions for their overall well-being.

Programming at scale with high efficiency: Urban children live in densely populated areas and areas exposed to a wide range of information sources such as social media, radio, television, rallies, campaigns etc. Innovations for raising awareness and affecting positive practices and behaviour in urban areas can further our goal to achieving scale and efficiency.

Leveraging technology: Make use of cost-effective technology platforms that support in evidence building for robust programming. Facilitating the digital inclusion of those excluded by making them self-reliant, to use and navigate them e.g., entitlements (social protection schemes/ services) through existing digital platforms for their family’s growth and development.

Partnerships: Bal Raksha Bharat has long-standing partnerships with key government agencies including local municipalities. We are fostering collaboration with them in strengthening the basic services and infrastructure for child-friendly planning and governance and making efforts to make children and their families resilient towards shocks and stresses.

Network to share knowledge and learning: We are working in close collaboration with urban think tanks, academia, and CSOs on collaborative research and programming for building safe, inclusive, liveable, and resilient cities for children. We are aspiring to co-create and cross-learn with the organisations/individuals that are working locally or globally to make the difference for happy childhood for girls and boys in a dynamic urban context. For example, we have signed a LoI with National Institute of Urban Affairs (NIUA) C-Cube for co-creating learning and knowledge, capacity building, etc. on climate resilience.

Key initiatives

Children Reshaping Cities: With Cities Forum, working on ‘Children re-shaping cities’ as an agenda to promote active participation of children in urban planning. This initiative lays emphasis on imparting knowledge to girls and boys about the basics of urban planning and strengthening their voices to suggest solutions for challenges against shaping child-friendly cities.

The success of the initiative was evident through the actions undertaken by its participants. The children at Sawan Park MCD School in Delhi, wrote to their local PHC officials raising concerns about the mosquito infestation in the locality. As a result, the authorities had the locality of 300 households, sprayed and fogged to rid it of the infestation, thus preventing the spread of dengue and other vector-borne diseases.

Tactical Urbanism Intervention: The increase in preparedness and resilience in urban communities and schools project in Kolkata, West Bengal and Patna, Bihar aims to empower children and communities in informal urban settlements/slums and schools to become disaster and risk resilient through an integrated child-centric urban resilience programme. This project is being implementing in collaboration with Kolkata and Patna Municipal Corporation in four urban wards, two in each city in 20-slum colonies and 20 schools. Till date the project has reached out to 15,800 girls, 13,358 boys.

Saving Lives and Supporting Future: Transforming the Lives of Children in Street Situations: From January 2022, SCBRB has been implementing a three-year project – ‘Saving Lives and Supporting Future: Transforming the Lives of Children in Street Situations in Delhi, India’ in four districts viz. North, North West, South, and South East. The project aims at reaching out to 12,610 such children, adolescents, and youth between the age of 1 to 24 years with a life cycle approach i.e. facilitating linkages to Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) services for children below 6 years provided by Government and supporting them in strengthening of these services, identifying children between 6-14 years and providing them with bridge schooling and remedial education support to develop school readiness and mainstreaming them into formal schooling and identifying and providing essential skill sets to adolescents and youth aged 15-24 years for a decent employment and transition into successful adulthood.

Child-friendly local urban governance: We have been undertaking several activities to promote child friendly cities under our ongoing Urban Resilience Project (2018-2023) in Patna and Kolkata. In this endeavor we have partnered with Kerala Institute of Local Administration (KILA) for co-developing standards for child friendly urban local governance with a view to take stock and learn from the existing interventions. This can later be upscaled or replicated in other Indian cities. This study intends to focus on child rights sensitization of the concerned stakeholders especially the elected representatives and officials in the Municipal Corporations of Kolkata and Patna. It is envisaged that this study will also help in sustaining or continuing various interventions at the schools, slums, and with children and their community after the completion of project in the year 2023.

Published Works

1.Urban Situation Analysis Guide and Toolkit
https://resourcecentre.savethechildren.net/pdf/urban_situation_analysis_guide_web_version_13-12-2017_final.pdf/
2.Don’t Ignore Children and Keep Them out Of Climate Change Conversations, https://bit.ly/3w6vBWu
3.Safeguarding Children from Disasters & Achieving SDG 11.5 (https://bit.ly/3QF0Os4) published in eGov and NIUA magazine (October Issue, Volume 17)
4.Fortify urban hotspots to protect children in the third wave, https://ianslife.in/life-style/fortify-urban-hotspots-protect-children-third-wave
5.How can children and adolescents be included in city planning and governance?
https://www.youthkiawaaz.com/2021/08/inclusion-of-children-and-adolescents-in-city-planning-and-governance/
6.COVID-19 and Play and Recreation for Girls in Urban Areas
https://www.citiesforum.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Urban-Action-Avneue_2022_Publication-booklet.pdf
7.Dust storms, PM2.5: How Delhi kids are gasping for breathe amid heat waves
https://www.firstpost.com/opinion/duststorms-pm2-5-how-delhi-kids-are-gasping-for-breathe-amid-heat-waves-10811331.html
8.No Child’s Play: The Enduring Challenge of Creating Child-Friendly Cities
https://www.orfonline.org/research/no-childs-play-the-enduring-challenge-of-creating-child-friendly-cities/
9.Effect of Covid-19 on play and recreation in urban slums of India: Perception of adolescent girls
https://tiikmpublishing.com/proceedings/index.php/ccy/article/view/1007
10.Averting crimes against children: It needs targeted campaigns, better use of data, mapping vulnerable locations
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/blogs/toi-edit-page/averting-crimes-against-children-it-needs-targeted-campaigns-better-use-of-data-mapping-vulnerable-locations/
11.A road map to deliver justice to child survivors
https://www.hindustantimes.com/analysis/a-road-map-to-deliver-justice-to-child-survivors-opinion/story-XvzuOTPpPEz4KHmLcguQ8J.html