Children having a class in the streetJerry Mintz

Below is a shortened version of an article that originally appeared in Education Revolution Magazine, www.educationrevolution.org

Butterflies is an organisation for street and working children in New Delhi. I first met its founder, Rita Panicker, at the IDEC (International Democratic Education Conference) in Japan in 2000. She had brought with her Amin, a 15-year-old street-child from Delhi, who had been living in the Delhi train station since he left home at age 11. He was an organizer of a working children's union, and gave a talk at the conference (Rita translated). He was clearly self-confident and full of life and ambition. Just meeting Amin aroused my interest in Butterflies. We became friends and have communicated since then. What kind of programme could have produced such a child? Was he an aberration, or were the other children as confident, independent and open? I went to Delhi to find out.

It seemed to me as a Westerner that going to India was stepping into a different reality. The first thing that struck me was the traffic. I used to think that Manhattan traffic was congested. No more. It is like child's play compared to the streets of Mumbai, Calcutta or Delhi. We were disoriented to begin with anyway because cars are supposed to drive on the left, but in India some traffic goes on both sides of the road! On each side of the street, each going as fast as they can, driving primarily with their horn and their brakes, are trucks, buses, other taxis, motorcycles, and mopeds. There are also swarms of motorised, triangular rickshaws, running on something like lawn-mower engines, vying for every inch of space they can find, spewing clouds of grey exhaust.

There are also bicycles, bicycle rickshaws, horse-drawn cargo carts, bicycle-drawn carts piled with boxes, pedestrians, and cows! Each is fighting for every inch of space, weaving back and forth, honking their horns and hitting their brakes, and almost continuously moving, stopping for nothing. There are even signs on many bumpers actually asking people to use their horn. When traffic slows, beggars from the slum-lined streets walk up to the windows of taxis, pointing to their mouths to indicate hunger. Many of them are women carrying babies.

In this chaotic world at the time of our visit Butterflies was running four night-shelters, and twelve contact points for education programmes for street kids. They were in touch with 1000 children around New Delhi, with about 250 sleeping in their shelters every night. There were 62 staff members.

A training session run by Amin, aged 16, and Anuj, aged 14.

We had a meeting with about 15 of the children, with Parwez, one of the street educators, translating. The children, who were aged between 8 and 15, said they were all working. Most were boys. Some were waiters; some worked at parties (it was the marriage season); many were rag pickers—that is, they collected cloth, plastic and other recyclables to sell. One eight-year-old we met there was about to go out and sell a stack of pressed rice cakes.

They considered themselves to be working children, not beggars. When they asked me if there was any programme similar to Butterflies in New York City, I said that I hadn't seen anything like it, but I had seen children begging for money. They thought that was demeaning. The children at Butterflies paid 5 rupees a day (about ten cents) for their food, shelter and education, and that came out of the money they earned by working.

The education programme is credited by India's Open School. Sessions are run at some of the shelters, and at various other sites around the city. The students can learn maths, English, Hindi, Science, etc. They can take any class they want or none. They can also choose to go to the government school. Butterflies is accredited to run programmes that go through the equivalent of 8th grade. Students can then take tests to go on to higher learning.

The children we met were attentive, curious and confident, and seemed happy and healthy. They looked you directly in the eye. They responded seriously to any question asked. At one point I told them about Summerhill School, which we had just visited in England. I explained that all decisions were made democratically and that students could choose to go to any classes they wanted, or none at all. They looked at each other, nodded, and said, "Yes, that's the same as here!" That comment stunned me a bit. Suddenly Butterflies seemed like a very low-cost democratic boarding school for 8-15 year olds living on their own!

The children, with help from Butterflies, have organized a union for their protection. For example, when a child works for someone and doesn't get paid, a group of children from the union will pay a visit to the employer. That's usually all it takes. Once a month, there's a meeting of the representatives of all of the groups around Delhi. They make basic policy decisions for the union.

The children have also organised a bank so that they do not have to carry their savings with them and risk being robbed. This bank has many branches around Delhi and beyond.

The main reasons why the children were living on the streets were that they were being beaten or abused at home, or had no educational help, or their families had been broken up or were too poor to take care of them. Some had stowed away on trains, coming from distant rural areas, mainly to go some place where they could get an education, having none in their villages.

Each Butterflies subgroup has its own democracy, and therefore the rules vary. For example, at one shelter the kids had outlawed inhalant drugs at the shelter, but not outside the shelter, since it was common among street children.

At the shelter we visited the children had outlawed any drug use inside or outside the shelter, including tobacco. If someone breaks a rule, they'll be fined some money, or excluded from the shelter for two or three days, or their locker will be locked for two or three days, etc. The consequence is up to the kids. The meeting can even fire staff members, and has done so on some occasions.

I asked the kids about how they felt about the freedom they have. They felt it was very important to them and it was one of the reasons why they liked this lifestyle.

The children asked us if there was police brutality toward children in New York. Ashfaq told us about a case where a Butterflies student was brutally beaten by a policeman and left unconscious. He was rescued by a group of children who brought him to the shelter and from there to a hospital. When he recovered, the children and Butterflies made an official complaint and brought the story to the newspapers. It became big news. The policeman was fired. They hope that this kind of action will make things better for the children.

The children we met at Butterflies said they were basically happy with their lives and their independence and their opportunity to get an education through the Butterflies programme. They were taking care of, not competing with each other. They all seemed to have lofty ambitions.

That visit has given me a lot to ponder. I have always wondered whether children with such absolute freedom would flourish if given support. The answer seems to be yes. The children had asked me whether there were similar programmes in New York. I realised that such a programme would be impossible. Children in New York – or in London or Tokyo, for that matter -would simply be sent to social services and to foster homes and regular school. The adults would never believe that they could live independently and take control of their own lives.

What we saw at Butterflies was unique, important, and requires much more examination.

 

 

 

Butterflies web site image

 

 

Since Jerry Mintz's visit Butterflies has developed further, now serving 1500 children in Delhi and also working internationally. www.butterflieschildrights.org is its inspiring website.

 

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