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3. Bal Utsav is a nonprofit, nonpartisan professional organization that
provides learning opportunities for children, parents, teachers,
practitioners, researchers and organizations working with children
and youth based issues at the national, state, and local levels.
Bal Utsav connects citizens, civil society groups, corporates,
academicians, media and government through various online and
offline methods.
Legal Status
Bal Utsav is an initiative of Child Empowerment Foundation India
(CEFI). CEFI is a fully incorporated, Not for Profit company
registered under Section 25 of the Ministry of Corporate Affairs,
Government of India, and operates without any government
assistance.
The organization relies solely on donations from generous donors,
sponsors and bequests and revenue raised from fundraisers and
events.
Bal Utsav | Who We Are

5. Bal Utsav services children largely between the ages of 3 to 18,
through in-school and community-based interventions.
In-School Programs
At Bal Utsav we work with various schools, and provide need
based interventions to children, staff and parents on a variety of
topics including but not limited to Rights of Children, Ethical
Training, Leadership Training, Workshops on Health & Sexual
Health and Child Sexual Abuse.
Educating Non-School Going Children
At Bal Utsav we educate non school going children with the use of
mulitigrade, multilevel pedagogy thus bridging the gap in the
learning levels and ensuring that learning is not about just being in
school.
Amid all the celebrations over the Right to Education (RTE) being
implemented, there is an elephant in the room that nobody is
talking about. It's called the Dropout Rate.
The spotlight till now has been on expanding the infrastructure,
appointing teachers, ensuring that schools are at walkable
distances, and so on.
All this is undoubtedly needed. But the biggest problem facing the
schooling system is that over 50% of children who join up in Class
I drop out by Class VIII. It is not about children who never attended
school — those are a separate category altogether. There is a
huge need for effective school education to every child, thus the
need to unite and supplement existing efforts.
Without an educated population, India will be unable to sustain a
strong rate of growth. Without education, young boys and girls will
never benefit from the country’s progress and prosperity. Education
is a chance for a better life and we want every child in India to be
able to atleast read and write.
For that, it is crucial to understand the problem and then build
effective strategies.
We at BalUtsav have been doing this by establishing and operating
schools in communities where there is a critical need for quality
education. The type of programs introduced in an area is based on
the needs of that community, such as pre-school programs,
learning support classes and urban-learning centers.
Bal Utsav | What We Do

7. The Museum School is an effort to try and fill the gap in the quality
of education between a rich child and a poor child of urban India.
Education is the foundation of a country and every individual has a
fundamental right to quality education. Yet there is a huge disparity
between the quality of education of a rich child and a poor child in
the same city.
The Government on its own tries everything to bring children to
school thru free textbooks, uniforms, bicycles, mid-day meals, but
does little to retain them in school. With minimal infrastructure,
almost no teaching aids, multigrade teaching by 1 teacher and rote
learning, quality gets ignored almost always. Poor quality leads to
poor attendance, poor retention, poor performance and huge
dropouts.
In our search to fill these gaps, we found that the Museums in a
city provide knowledge and a fun filled learning environment, yet
are never used as centers for regular learning. The exhibits in a
Museum enable practical and conceptual learning, even for
illiterates, yet are never used as teaching aids.
The Museum School collaborates with Museums in a city, making
them the regular school, matches curriculum with exhibits, and
facilitates a fast-track bridging mechanism using existing Govt.
infrastructure (the Museums) as schools,
Hugely inspired by the Gurukul model of teaching, children are
taught literacy under the trees, knowledge at the Museums and
skills to make them educated and employable.
The school covers 100’s of non school going children from the
slums of Bangalore and operates 5 days a week and 4 hours
everyday. (Tuesday to Saturday). All children attending the Museum
school are provided with free pick up and drop, have access to a
student teacher ratio of 10:1, a nutritious meal planned by a
qualified dietitian and have curriculum that covers values and life
skills, literacy, academics, arts, sports, adolescent and vocational
education.
The Museum School thus fills the gap by providing holistic
education to numerous children who otherwise never attend a
school.
Museum School Bangalore

9. India is changing and modernizing quickly, urbanization being the
most visible aspect. New infrastructures are being built on a mass
scale; malls and high-rise buildings are springing up every fortnight
while this meets the eye what is most often not known is that the
construction industry is the single largest employer of migrant
laborers, the poorest of the poor, in Indian cities.
The real estate boom in India has resulted in numerous
construction sites in every major city. Every construction site
demands a huge labor force which often comprises of illiterate
villagers from neighboring states. These laborers and their families
live close to the construction site in labor camps or slums. Lack of
access to education for the children of these laborers is a huge
problem. These children do not attend school due to factors such
as poverty, accessibility and lack of motivation. This results in a
large number of kids being out of the school system.
Bal Utsav has been one of the few organizations specifically
supporting the health, education and safety of children of
construction laborers and has reached a large number of children.
However, there are millions of children in the country that live on
construction sites.
Our vision is for all children to have a nurturing and happy
childhood and our mission is to promote ‘child-friendly sites’;
where every child living on a construction site is safe, healthy and
educated, and is able to enjoy their childhood.
Bal Utsav believes that if a child cannot go to school, let’s take the
school to the doorstep of the child. We do this by providing
education at construction sites through our uniquely designed
programs so that the children of construction laborers have an
opportunity to be a part of the countries development.
At Bal Utsav we have developed a model of comprehensive child
care and work in close partnership with parents, the construction
industry, labour communities, government agencies and partner
organizations to promote education of children at construction
sites.
Schools For Children of Migrant Laborers

11. In India as in most countries rape of children and women is on the
rise, the last few years have seen an increase in violence against
women and children and given the recent instances of rape, it
shows no sign of fading away.
There is something terribly wrong with a society that is unable to
guarantee the safety of its women and children. The horrific and
sadistic sexual assault and rape of a 5 year old girl in Delhi shook
the nation’s conscience. It also struck fear into the heart of every
parent with a young girl child. It was well known that India is not
the safest place in the world for women. It is now equally apparent
that it is a terrible place for children. A recent report says that the
incidence of child rape in india has grown by 336%
This is a sign of regress.
It is unfortunate that it has taken such a brutal incident to highlight
what seems to be an endemic trend. We believe that it takes a
particularly twisted mind to sexually assault a minor. Yet, several
studies have shown that the typical rapist is not usually a stand-
out anti-social personality.
After the fatal gang rape of a 23 year old in a Delhi bus sparked
outrage across India, the nation took to the streets to protest
heinous sexual assaults on women and children.
Hundreds were seen shouting slogans, campaigning outside
government buildings, scuffling with policemen. However, too
often, in India, public outrage dissipates without any fundamental
reform of broken systems. The least we can do as a society is not
to let our children and women down. Remember, legislation alone
cannot save women trapped in a patriarchal culture… Something
needs to be done.
In the backdrop of a never-ending stream of news about women,
girls, teens, pre-teens getting sexually assaulted. We realized that
while everyone was affected by the occurrence, most did not know
what they could do to stop violence and abuse against women
and children.
This is where Bal Utsav stepped in: to tell people what they can
do. Thus was born the MENtoring.
MENtoring is a social initiative designed to create awareness to
instill gender equality and respect towards women through gender
sensitization. This program is being launched in schools and would
make children and women feel safe as it will address the problem
through a three phased approach of:
- Raising pledges to not indulge in abuse and violence of women
and children
- To ensure people do not remain a mute spectator - when
children and women are being harmed.
- And equipping people to deal with the situation appropriately.
MENtoring

13. Bal Utsav | Where We Have Been Mentioned
We are grateful to both Print and Electronic media for their continuous support to make our endeavors and actions reach out to a larger
audience

15. Bal Utsav invites you and your organization to consider joining our
support network thus enabling us to replicate and scale the
activities of the organization.
We look forward to discussing with you ways in which we can best
tailor your support and secure the long term future of children in
India.
At Bal Utsav, supporters are seen as invaluable partners therefore
we aim to provide projects that are of best interest to your needs
and also achieve our vision of 'Long-Term and Mutually beneficial
partnerships'.
All donations are exempt under Section 80G of the Income Tax
Act.
We believe the next chapter of Bal Utsav to be a very exciting and
innovative. With extensions to in-school and community-based
interventions and the consequent opening up of our services in
other cities of India the potential of the partnership with Bal Utsav
is immense.
We look forward to working with you to develop a relationship that
provides exceptional rewards for you as well as us and to ensure
that the spirit and voice of the Children can be experienced for
generations to come.
Bal Utsav | Why Get Involved

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