Mumbai Smiles in Childcare Workshop for the Vulnerable Young

Our work with the slum communities involves interaction with all kind of daily wage workers, right from labourers, to rickshaw drivers, to vegetable vendors, to milkmen and every other person we can think of whom we come across on a regular basis, who are our daily support system. And in order to ensure ourselves that we are providing the best of the services that we can, our team, time and again, tries to engage in workshops and sessions from where they can gather more information and resources to improve our network and services. And so recently, Mumbai Smiles participated in a workshop called “Childcare for the Vulnerable Young”, that was organised by Mumbai Mobile Crèches, an organisation which works for the children of migrant construction workers living on the construction sites. With a total of 40 participants in this conference cum workshop, Mumbai Smiles was represented by two of our Program Officers, Pragati & Vikas, where they engaged in activities and discussions on the challenges faced while working with the underprivileged in the age group of 0-6 years. Various panel discussions were also held to engage the various stakeholders present at the event, on the topics of Government Policies on Child Rights, Challenges in implementing the different policies, building network for effective grass-root work for tribal, migrant, institutionalized children and other related topics, which was supported by real life examples from the participants and a brainstorming session on how to solves the different issues that crop up on a regular basis.

The feedback of the workshop from everyone was very positive. The ocean of knowledge is so vast that no matter how much one knows about one subject, it can never be enough and that is where such workshops and conferences help in bringing together the different minds for effective exchange of dialogues and ideas.