Bachpan Bachao Andolan: Nobel Peace Prize Laureate 2014 Kailash Satyarthi

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Kailash Satyarthi: Nobel Peace Prize Laureate 2014

Hindustan Times

New Delhi, October 10, 2014

Many would have heard his name for the first time after the announcement of the announcement of the Nobel Peace Prize on Monday. But Kailash Satyarthi has been a relentless crusader of child rights for years now. His organisation New Delhi-based Bachpan Bachao Andolan has been at the head of the fight against child labour by creating domestic and international consumer resistance to products made by bonded children, as well as with direct legal and advocacy work. Through a number of training programmes, Satyarthi also helps children sold to pay their parents’ debts to find new lives and serve as agents of prevention within their communities.
Bachpan Bachao Andolan was India’s first civil society campaign against the exploitation of children. It was set up in 1980 and to date has touched the lives of 80,000 young people. One of the key initiatives of BBA is its Bal Mitra Gram (BMG) programme, an innovative development model to combat child labour, protect child rights and ensure access to quality education to all. “A few years after we started BBA, we realised that to combat child trafficking and labour we must address the source of the problem: villages since nearly, 70% of child labourers come from villages. So we decided to create an environment where children are withdrawn from the workplaces, attend school, voice their opinions and ensure that authorities hear them out,” Kailash Satyarthi, founder, BBA, told HT a few months ago.
With this aim, BBA started its BMG, which are essentially model villages that are free from child exploitation and promote child rights issues. Since the model’s inception in 2001, BBA has transformed 356 villages as child friendly villages across 11 states of India, but most of the work is concentrated in Rajasthan and Jharkhand. The children of these villages attend school, participate in bal panchayat (child governance bodies), yuwa mandals (youth groups) and mahila mandal and interact regularly with the gram panchayat. In BMGs, BBA ensures that children up to the age of 14 have access to free, universal and quality education and schools have proper infrastructure so that girls don’t drop out. It also works with local communities to address local traditions like child marriages.

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