Plantation Rural Education Development Organization

PREDO

Plantation Rural Education Development Organization

30 Pushpadana Mawatha, Kandy, Sri Lanka Tel / Fax: 08.236746 Email: predo@sltnet.lk                                                            

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Plantation Rural Education and Development Organization (PREDO)   was first established in  1989

Registered with the social Service Department Reg No. 0248- 29.06. 1994.      

Objective  of this  specific activity

Creating an environment for the children of Sri Lanka ,especially concentrating on the plantation  children in the working  area of PREDO  , enabling them  to live in peace and harmony  by eliminating the obstacles that prevent  the enjoyment of the rights of the children , and peaceful co existence,  with the direct and active participation of children themselves and the Civil society.

            PREDO’s Vision

Awakening   in the plantation worker and the villagers individually and collectively the awareness  their own capacity to uplift and humanize their living and working conditions,  taking them out of the  sense of dependence ,  become active agents of their own development and promote the growth of mutual understanding and accommodation among all ethnic groups enabling every one to live in a peaceful environment, with special focus and attention on children’s  rights and development.    

The Operational  Area

Plantation and Villagers in the Nuwraeliya District and Villagers in the Dambula Prdesia Saba Area in the Matale District, while taking a sectoral approach in all it’s activities thereby extending it’s program to the whole plantation sector.  

• Over all Objective
• To promote the growth of mutual understanding and accommodation among all ethnic groups- Conflict resolution and peace building .. 
• To initiate activities to ensure the elimination of social disparities, and ensure  social justice and fair play  and to  improve the condition of women  and children and empower them.
• To ensure the basic human & fundamental rights of the people especially of the people of the plantation  and  promote Children rights
• Uplift and humanize the living and working conditions, of the beneficiaries and to promote self help programs, taking them out of the sense of dependence and inferiority to become active agents of their own development.
• Activities
• Awareness Building/ Adult education 
• Human Rights Education (Children /Women /Workers)
• Child Development/ Prevention of child labor & Abuse.
• Promoting  Preschool Education /Teacher training Educational Exhibitions, Cultural and Sports activities
• Leadership, Health, First Aid Training Programs
• Gender Education/Empowering Women  
• Facilitating the Issue of Civil Documents/Birth certificates.
• Saving schemes and Income Generation Programs among women
• Programs to Promote Ethnic Harmony and conflict resolution, and peace building.

Introduction.

The plantation child

The Plantation community is underdeveloped in all respect compared to other communities in the country. This affects the educational development of the plantation child.  The closed plantation system, the congested housing system, lack of proper living space, the environment and other factors are not conducive for the proper physical and mental development of the child. Due to lack of educational standards and social awareness among parents the children receive less care from their parents. Especially the mother gets very little time to spend for her child. All this adversely affects the personality growth of the child. The disputes among parents and in the environment, the bad words used constantly by the adults creates a fear psychosis in the child and affects      psychological growth of the child. Further the absence or lack of educated people in the environment is an adverse factor. It should be noted that quite a number of plantation children under the age of 5 spend most of their lifetime in the crèches in the plantations. The situation in the crèches is that, one crèche attendant is compelled look after large number of children of the age range of 3 months of 5 years  (due to poor economical conditions in the family some mothers leave even the one month old child in the crèche) whose needs and attention required, is very different. Due to this reason the environment and opportunity for personality growth, proper physical and mental growth is totally absent in the crèches. There is still another disturbing factor. Almost 80 percent of the crèche attendants in the crèches are persons who do not know the language, culture and the religion of the children. This does not in any way help the child for its personality growth and the skill of learning its mother tongue. In addition to this there are good numbers of children who do not attend the Crèches for various reasons.  In the absence of Preschools as an alternative these children totally lack the opportunity for any development contemplated during this period of the child. .

In a community  where the children are seen as part of the “working machine “ and who are bound to contribute to the family income “Child Rights “ has been an unknown subject in the plantation sector till  recent times. 

PREDO’s  efforts to  promote education of the Plantation children.

In this backdrop PREDO  started  preschools in the plantation .One who knows about the  management structure in the plantations would know that independent Preschool cannot be run in the plantations. However PREDO  conducted   awareness programs  and  also engaged in advocacy programs to win over the right for Preschool education for the plantation children and succeeded in  forming strong Preschool development committees in the plantations .Today there are about 142 preschool run by the Preschool development societies and the student population stands at about 3700. Although the Plantation people who make the major contribution to the economy they   happen to be the people who are paid the lowest wages which is about 275 /-to 300 /= per day. However they know that only way to come out of the vicious circle of poverty and illiteracy is to educate their  children. Even under most difficult circumstances they  pay the teachers while PREDO undertakes the task of training the teachers and monitoring the functions of the schools. 75   percent  of the schools are run in temporary sheds .What  is important to PREDO is to ensure the right of the child for preschool education rather than worrying about infrastructure facilities for the schools. Whenever PREDO received assistance from well wishes  PREDO made the people to contribute by way of unskilled  labour and had managed to build about 12 new preschools. Having decent  building for the other schools is still a dream but PREDO believes that  it could gradually  move forward trying find new buildings for the other preschools.

Taking one more step forward.

PREDO then launched into establishing Children clubs  to ensure the continuity of the progress made in the Preschool and also to  getting the direct involvements of the children in safeguarding the rights of the children. Unlike the children in the other sectors the mobility of children is strictly restricted other than going to school ,and the most affected are the girls and this is to  due the deep rooted cultural  and superstitious beliefs and  practices among these people . There aren’t children parks or playgrounds for children in plantations which has thousands and thousands  of hectors  of   land. When speaking of development in the field of educational field  is would suffice to  say that  the children entering the University from this sector has still not reached  even  1% while the Indian origin upcountry people  form about 7 to 8% of the total population.

In this backdrop PREDO established Children clubs  and presently has about 140 children  clubs .  The membership varying from about 30 to 60 in each of the plantation and the total membership  is 6710 , (boys  2991 girls 3719).Once again the main concern of PREDO was to promote the educational standards of the children. PREDO educated both the children and  the parents about child rights especially about the  right for education of the child.

While providing  sports an  other  least facilities to these children clubs still remains an unreachable target, making  computer and information technological skills available to these children  would  remain be a mere dream for  long time. However PREDO  wished  to give priority to improve the reading habits among  children .This inspired the idea of “collecting books for the mobile libraries “ for the children clubs.

Some of the activities of the children clubs.

A brief statement of what PREDO  has achieved over the years.

Small children  -below  05 years 

• Running  142  Early childhood development centers (Preschools ) with a present student population of 3700 children.
• Children are  given better opportunity for physical and metal and psychological growth.
• Children have gained the lost dignity.
• More than 18,000 children have joined State school from PREDO preschools.

Middle age Children( 7 years 13 years )

• More than 6800 children have become members of the about 120 children clubs.
• More than 1000 children have passed the year five scholarship examination during the last decade.
• The self esteem, personally and leadership qualities of children     improved considerably.
•  The status of Gender equality has improved at home , school and society.
• There is significant Social mobility among children especially among girls.

BIGER CHILDREN.( 14 years to 18 years )

• Children aware of child rights, violations and abuses and how to safeguard themselves.
• Mobile library facilities provided for children.
• Children club networks established with a Child club consortium in the Nuwara Eliya District.
• Children representatives appointed to local power structures vis Preschool Development societies, Temple management committees. .

The members in the children clubs include children of age from 7 years to 18 years.

Awards

PREDO  has received awards  for its work with the children especially in the field of  formal and non formal education , Preschool education and peace building  activities .Details of which appear in the attached broacher.

Funding 

PREDO is presently  funded by  CORDAID   by Netherlands only  for a consentization program in which awareness creation about child rights and human rights are a component. Children club activities are not funded . However PREDO carries on the children club activities out of necessity as awareness creation should lead to some activity where  the knowledge gained need to applied  in day to day life.

Challenges in running the Mobile libraries.

On one hand these plantation   children are asking for supplementary  educational   books  as they do not have the facility or the means to attend  tuition  or supplementary classes .However these  books in the tamil language are  comparatively very expensive compared the books in the other language medium . On the other hand most of the other books which could be used in the libraries  are   not  available in Sri Lanka  but  have to come form India    and the prices of these books are three times more than the original price .

 Assistance sought 

• Assistance to purchase books for the children libraries /and even other that could be used by adults.
• Support  PREDO’s  efforts  to collect used books which could be used
• Other possible assistance to help the children clubs ( especially  in promoting computer and information technology