Novel child-to-child action plan

A project on domestic child workers titled “Hum Bhi Bachche Hain” (We too are children) will be launched here in the Rajasthan capital on Wednesday. The CUTS Centre for Consumer Action, Research and Training (CART), in partnership with Save the Children (U.K) will implement the project in 35 select schools in close collaboration with the Departments of Education, Social Welfare, Labour, Women and Child Development. The first phase of the project, which will assess the magnitude of the problem of child domestic workers in the city and generate awareness about it, will be for one year from July 2005 to June 2006. “It is going to be a child-to-child approach in which 50 students from each of the 35 schools will participate. One student will take care of 10 houses,” according to George Cheriyan, assistant director, CUTS. “The State Government can give the responsibility of monitoring the situation to the select schools”, Mr. Cheriyan said, pointing out that the city schools have responded enthusiastically to the project. Child domestic workers, working within the homes, as such, were invisible for public scrutiny. India employs the largest number of working children in the world as every third household in the country had a working child, he pointed out. Mr. Cheriyan said 17 per cent of India’s domestic workers are under 15 years and 40 per cent of them are girls.