Two women working in a school for Delhi's poor swap notes with the head of an Early Excellence Centre in London. Caroline Swinburne reports
At first it seems that Pembury House Centre for Childhood in Tottenham, London, one of the three state-funded nursery centres making up the Haringey Early Excellence Network, has little in common with a charitable school like the Bal Vihar, which operates in the slums of Delhi in India. Bal Vihar was founded by Rashmi Misra 15 years ago to provide an education for 3,000 children - most of them girls, many with special needs and all from the casteless class of 'untouchables'. Catherine Hunt from Britain has worked with Rashmi since November last year as the school's volunteer co-ordinator and fund-raiser, sponsored by the British agency Voluntary Service Overseas.
While Bal Vihar may lag behind when it comes to equipment, at a conceptual level the two institutions have much in common. Rashmi Misra has long been aware that in Delhi, as in north London, it is important to look at the needs of the whole family if childcare is to be truly beneficial.
No vision
'When the women came to pick up their children, you could see in their eyes that they were also thirsty to learn,' she explains. 'As children they'd stayed at home looking after younger siblings until they were old enough to work at some menial job, or get married. This meant that they had no vision of a different life to pass on to their daughters.
'So I decided that we had to try to education them, too. Now we run classes to teach them everything from family planning, health, hygiene and human rights to income-generating skills such as embroidery, jewellery and stationery making.'
'It may be three generations before we really see the deeper benefits of these efforts,' says Catherine Hunt. 'But you can already see some changes - at least the women are starting to realise how important it is to educate their daughters as well as their sons. And they're often able to earn a salary for the first time, which can be of immense benefit to the whole family.'
Pembury House in London also tries to support families in as comprehensive a manner as possible. As well as a nursery there are also holiday play schemes, drop-in facilities, family outreach works and a network for local childminders.
Parents can also attend adult education classes in anything from parenting to English as a second language.
For example, Serpil Aksoy, who is Turkish and mother of two-year-old Ilasyda Rose, came to the UK four years ago, but still speaks little English. She hopes the English classes she attends at Pembury House, while her daughter is cared for in the creche, will enable her to find a job and escape from the poverty trap.
Single mother Angie Syme, whose four-year-old daughter Emma has been attending Pembury House for the past year, has also found her life transformed by the centre. Before becoming a mother Angie worked as a social worker; now she's been employed as the centre's first family outreach worker. 'The work is all about bridging the gap between the child in the home and in the nursery,' she explains. 'You need to know about the home situation to get a full picture of what's going on. My job will involve visiting the child at home, talking to the family and really trying to work out what we can do to give that child the best possible chance in life.'
Exchange programme
Rashmi Misra, Catherine Hunt and Val Buckett, headteacher of Pembury House, would like to build on the similarities between the two institutions. 'I would love to have an ongoing link with Pembury House,' says Rashmi Misra. 'Maybe we could have an exchange teacher, or an exchange student.'
'I'm sure we have a lot to learn from each other, about how we've approached this same issue against a very different cultural background,' says Val Buckett. 'Learning about communities all around the world is very important, and I think there could be a lot of mileage in running seminars here, and thinking about an exchange programme.
'I worked abroad in Europe for many years and found that to be very enriching - there's certainly a lot we can learn from European childcare systems. And I'd sure it would be equally beneficial to extend this to the rest of the world.'
