Help children in rural areas to fight for their rights

Kailash Satyarthi Children's Foundation (KSCF) have set up Bal Mitra Gram (BMG) or Child Friendly Village concept is a grassroots transformation and child centric process that empowers a child and the village community he lives in to understand and protect their own rights

Bal Mitra Gram (BMG) model is essentially a preventive and curative strategy aimed at eliminating the violations of child rights.

It works towards resolving children's issues by empowering them and facilitating village development as a whole. It is a comprehensive approach towards sustainable development as it encapsulates the mobilization and empowerment of the entire village by ensuring participation of children and the community.

The objective of a BMG is to proactively guide the process of empowerment over 3 years of time period until it becomes self-sustainable on resolving children's issues and facilitating rural development.

During this process, all the different groups of children, youth, women, elders, influencers and elected village council officials start listening to each other, start respecting each other, start recognizing the critical issues which hampers the progress of marginalized communities in the village.

The participation of community is ensured through various stakeholders Group like Youth Group and Women Group. The participation of children themselves is extremely significant which is ensured by forming democratic institution like Bal Panchayat (Children Parliament) which serves as an effective tool to influence the decision making process and ensures the participation of children at the micro level.

Gender equality is at the core of functioning of Bal Panchayat. Under Right to Education Act, 2009 every child has the right to free and compulsory education of eight years from the age of 6 years to 14 years. BMG envisions a process where all children below the age of 14 years are withdrawn from work and subsequently enrolled in school, learning outcomes enhanced through remedial classes.

The uniqueness of the BMG initiative lies in active participation of the village children in creating a legitimate democratic space for themselves in Panchayats, communities, schools and families.

BMG works for child rights at the grassroots level. It works towards solving the deep rooted problem of child labour and creating a demand and value for good education as a village pride.

It addresses issues pertaining to children's rights like eradication of child labour, missing children, child trafficking, child marriage and enforcing the right to education. BMG also empowers the communities to collectively demand and pressurize the local government institutions to facilitate the smooth access to their entitlements.

It facilitates the communities to collectively solve many other issues like maternal and child health, gender equality, rainwater harvesting, re-afforestation, safe drinking water, sanitation etc. through leverage the benefit from existing government schemes.

Currently BMG has 16 years?of experience implementing in 6 States Bihar, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh in India. A total of 570 BMG's have been established out of which 137 are active in April 2018. BMG program has directly reached to over 200000 children through its activities.

When you donate to this program, you help Kailash Satyarthi Children's Foundation help the underprivileged children and youth. Your donation can help these children make a better life for themselves and well as for their villages.

The Kailash Satyarthi Children’s Foundation (KSCF) was established in 2004 under the leadership of Nobel Peace Laureate, Kailash Satyarthi to create a world which is worth living in for a child. A world where every child is free, lives a life of dignity, has access to health and education, and the opportunity to realize her or his potential.

The goal of the foundation is to end all violence against and exploitation of children by ensuring child protection through innovations, research, awareness generation, promoting partnerships and participation.

Towards this, KSCF is scaling Mr. Satyarthi’s committed work of almost four decades at both the grassroots and global policy level.

KSCF has adopted a strategy of building greater collaboration between governments, businesses and communities, ensuring effective national and international laws, scaling know-how and successful practices, and creating partnerships with key stakeholders.

KSCF is part of the larger movement sparked by Mr. Satyarthi, which also includes Bachpan Bachao Andolan, Bal Ashram Trust and Global March Against Child Labour.