The Pratham in Delhi and Jaipur recently hosted a group of teachers from the Netherlands, members of Algemene Onderwijsbond (AOb), a teacher's union from the Nertherlands. Wouter Bolding of NOVIB (Oxfam Netherlands) and a representative of Hivos were also in the group together with a music composer. The trip lasted from the 12th of October to the 19th of October. The expenses, such as air travel, boarding and lodging, was paid by the group members themselves! Only the car rental, to travel within India, was taken care off by NOVIB.

The purpose of the trip was to get a first hand knowledge on child labour situation in India and to see how Pratham organizes its teaching programme to mainstream these children into school. The leader of this group was Marten Kircz, member of the Executive Board of AOb. Though a teacher by profession Marten spends 90% of his time performing union activities.

Some of the members of this group spoke about their experiences in India, both past and present (a few of them were actually first time travellers), for the Pratham website.

Marten Kircz, a teacher of Dutch literature in a secondary school in Amsterdam, was inspired by the global march against child labour, particularly by the one held in New Delhi, six years ago. So, he decided to come to India and get a closer look at the child labour scenario in this country. A chance meeting with Madhav Chavan, in Mumbai, made him take note of the Pratham 'outreach programme'. He was sufficiently impressed by the activities of Pratham to introduce Pratham to NOVIB, the OXFAM in Netherlands - a funding agency.

Over the last six years, Marten has made 4 trips to India. He feels that as a country India is a high ancient civilization, and together with a modern democracy, first rate universities, and being IT leaders of the world, should not be branded a third world country. The child labour problem in India, he noted, was more a cultural problem than an economic problem. "A child who works is exhausted, both mentally and physically, by the age of 16. Ideally, every child must go the school till the 16th year of age and then branch out to further academic courses or to any other professional course."

In Delhi, apart from visiting the Pratham centres and a few MCD Schools, the Dutch group also visited a couple of prestigious schools in New Delhi and Gurgaon. These visits made Marten feel even more sanguine that the solution to the Indian child labour problem lay in consolidating the grass root education system. He said "Every underprivileged child should be brought within the formal school education net."

Speaking about Pratham, he appreciated the efforts being made to mainstream the underprivileged. He likens the efforts of Pratham to "a drop of oil spreading" and has a word of appreciation for the data collection method and the maintenance of the data (which in his first trip was tedious). However, he feels that Pratham should do more to mobilize public support to eradicate child labour, by getting more media attention.

Monique Lempers, Project Officer Bureau International Relations, Hivos, a first time traveller to India, gave a brief account of Hivos which promotes Economic and Cultural Development in the 5 continents. Hivos is a non-profit organization in the Netherlands trying to eradicate child labour around the globe and feel that every child must go to school; their slogan is: "School is the best place to work" (www.schoolisthebestplacetowork.org).

She likes Pratham's focus on formal education for every child and the quality of education provided to them; but feels that Pratham could focus more on mainstreaming every working child they teach. In this regard she would love to see more interaction between Pratham and NPO's such as the MV Foundation.

An interesting member of the group was Hans Van De Veeredonk, a music composer and teacher, on a first time visit to India. Hans feels intensely for the child labours of the world. This has prompted him to compose musical shows depicting the plight of the child labours. A few years ago, he composed a musical involving 2 Kathak dancers, 1 harmonium player and a tabla player - all Dutch-Surinamese of Indian origin. The musical was held in all the cities of the Netherlands, with the school children being the actors.

The theme of his current production, which he hopes to complete by December 2003, is based on an Indian, adopted by his Dutch parents at an early age, who finds out that he has 3 brothers in India who are all child workers. This discovery makes him embark on a quest to raise money to help his brothers in India.

So touched was Hans, on his first trip to India, seeing the child workers, that he had to pop in a sedative to soothe his nerves and catch sleep the first night. He subsequently overcame his initial reaction and went back home in better frame of mind. Hans would love to come back to India and perform with the underprivileged children. Hans has also worked with the children in Gaza.

Gerrie Schaank, primary school teacher from Beerta, had accompanied Marten Kircz in the first trip, six years ago. He observed that the government, now, is more focussed in abolishing child labour and Pratham is going step by step towards eradicating child labour.

Paula Kaizers, of Amsterdam also a primary school teacher, has already made 2 trips to India in the last 2 years. She was pretty impressed with the way Pratham is functioning and met the working children who are being educated by Pratham. She stressed on the fact that she will go back to the Netherlands and narrate what she saw of the child labours in India and impress upon the school children of the Netherlands how privileged they were.

Tinie Van der Vlies, is a secondary school teacher from Joure, teaches Geography and English. She liked the enthusiasm of both the teachers and the students despite the difficult condition and the lack of facilities compared to the Netherlands. She was much impressed by the library programme of Pratham.

Atty Hu˙zer, again a primary school teacher of Amsterdam, on her second trip to India, was surprised to see the quick grasping power of the underprivileged children, she was even more astonished to see them learn without adequate learning aids! The method of counting numerals in the primary schools in India, she said, was similar to that in the Netherlands. She felt that the facilities in the school could be improved and the number of students per class could be reduced.

On their return, all the teachers who came to India will collaborate with Hans to stage Han's next production