Conference on the Eradication of Childhood Poverty

On Friday, which was International Children’s Day, I attended a conference on the eradication of childhood poverty, which was organized by the Bahai Office of External Affairs, UNICEF, and some other NGO’s and organizations. It was held at Amity University here in Lucknow. There purpose of the conference was to create a coalition for addressing the issue of child poverty in Uttar Predesh, the state I’m living in.

Nicole has had a big hand in organizing it and I joined her in the morning at the University where we began setting things up. The conference began at about ten thirty in a very classy auditorium. I snagged a seat near the plug, set up my laptop and prepared myself for the enjoyable work of a scribe, recording the speeches, and creating a soft copy of the registration book.

The attendance covered a wide variety of people from the government, NGO’s, faith based groups, students of education, members of UNICEF, members of the press and some children. The attendance was close to two hundred people, counting the children.

In the morning session we had four guest speakers. The discussions had a large focus on the Millennium Development Goals, the goals set for each country in the year 2000 to be fulfilled by the year 2015. Some of these goals include reducing the rate of infant mortality, and halting the spread of HIV/AIDS

One of the major themes addressed was the idea that poverty doesn’t just constitute income and matters of finance, but includes health, education, family ties and ethical values. There was of course a great emphasis on education as the solution to poverty, both the education of children and the education of mothers in issues such as healthcare. There was also a discussion on the need for improved statistics and more frequent monitoring.

If there is one lesson that I could take from listening to these various speeches is that the eradication of childhood poverty is in no ways a simple problem. During the course of the speeches we discussed gender discrimination, healthcare, abortion, women’s education, quality of schooling, literacy, skill formation, sex education, caste discrimination, hygiene, access to water, nutrition, ante-natal care, accuracy of statistics, the role of religion, infant and child mortality, child labour, child marriages, children’s rights and many other topics. It is, as I’ve written before, not a problem that you can just throw money into. As one of the speakers said, the Indian government has ample funding to apply to these issues, but it is often sent back because no one knows how to use it.

We had a tea break and some more speeches after wards. After these talks, some of the children came up and either asked questions of told anecdotes. I’m going to include two of them but since they were speaking in Hindi and I had to copy down a translation someone was giving to me, it contains only the gist of what they were saying, and not the exact phrasing.

“I have five siblings, including myself. I wanted to continue my education, but my parents want me to take care of the home. I wanted to do something for my parents and study a lot so I can honour them. My parents do not allow me, but I have got admission in class 10 and I have the books. My parents have told me to stop but I still want to study. What can I do?”

“We keep talking about stopping childhood marriages, but it hasn’t been stopped. In our neighbourhood there was a girl, and we tried very hard and we stopped her marriage. Her parents asked who we were to stop the marriage, and we explained the situation and convinced them that they were doing wrong. If someone is just telling everyone that my child is going to married we should stop it. In schools if the child has no book for one week, they kick them out of the class. They should ask why we don’t have our books because sometimes we have no money for the books.”

If anyone is confused as to why it is a good thing that they stopped that girl’s marriage, it’s because child marriages is a problem in India. Some girls at the age of twelve or thirteen are being married off. It’s illegal, but still a large issue.

After the children spoke we had lunch and then there was a workshop, which I didn’t record. The participants separated into different groups and discussed specific issues. I was impressed by the comprehensiveness of the various talks during the course of the conference, but that is what you can expect from having so many experts in the field gathered together. Hopefully the coalition they form will be able to take that comprehensiveness to the field of action, and affect marked change.