Vedanta “Khushi”, that says all about Child Care

Vedanta “Khushi” is a mission driven by the vision of Mr. Anil Agarwal, Chairman – Vedanta Group’s that “no child in India should remain malnourished and be deprived of education and primary health. Let India be a child malnourished free nation.”

Scribbling  some  figures  on  the  net  and  in  certain reports of Indian Economic  Survey,  UNICEF, UNDP, etc. a not so much usual fact came forward and  that was the child population in India, the growing number of deprived or  underprivileged  children  in  India,  the number of street children in India,  the number of child deaths in India, and the number of children who dropout from schools every year in India.

India,  a  country  with  largest  child  population, largest malnourished children, largest child deaths, and largest street children in the world, put our  minds  and  thoughts  in  a  thinking-hat  mode.  For once, we felt apprehensive about building India for a bright and progressive future. It was sure, government, NGOs, corporates alone cannot bring this problem to a solution and common masses need to align and join on such national missions.

This is where we decided to launch an awareness campaign “Khushi”, which was aimed to spread the message of care for the underprivileged children and building a life of dignity for them.  The message was clear that about 50% of India’s child population needs attention – attention towards their nutrition, education and good health. The message was also clear that without the involvement of similar minds, India would never be able to make it to a developed nation.

With this thought, on 10th April 2012, Vedanta Group designed “Khushi”, an in-house campaign on social media - on blog and on the Facebook.  We also decided to make “Khushi” a 100% non-funding campaign that would strongly engage with people and spread awareness to encourage them to take individual steps and initiatives. Where the blog, www.khushi-creatinghappiness.blogspot.in, became a platform for encouraging   people  by  uploading  success  stories,  articles  and  statistics;  the  Facebook became  a  platform for on-line discussions and debates and spreading  awareness. By now, on “Khushi” group, about 60 debates have been carried out on a number of issues like girls’ education, infrastructure in schools, problem of street children, beggary, quality of education, rehabilitation, disparities in urban and rural education, sending underprivileged children back to school,  malnutrition, corporal punishments to children, child labour making crackers,  effects of TV advertising on children, portray of Indian Children in Cinema,  mobile phone and their effects on Children,  Safety of Children etc.

The debates became a platform for knowledge sharing and a guiding factor for proposed actions. Taking forward the outcomes, 150 schools have bee adopted in Rajasthan for completely changing their infrastructure, study material and other facilities.

Vedanta “Khushi” also spent days with the street children to understand their issues and problems. Accordingly, workshops were conducted to inculcate the importance of education, health and hygiene, nutrition and behaviour change.

To further strengthen the objective of “Khushi”, 75 child care centres have been adopted in Tamil Nadu, Odisha, Rajasthan and Chattisgarh. These centres have about 2500 deprived and underprivileged children.  These children are provided daily nutritious breakfast, lunch, books and primary health check-ups.

Recently, Vedanta’s “Khushi” came together with NDTV for the girl child campaign – Our Girls Our Pride.  The campaign ambassador was the gorgeous Bollywood film actress Ms.  Priyanka Chopra.   Ms.  Krishna Poonia, the Padamshree, and the ace international athlete also became joined “Khushi” campaign.

Today,  when we are about to complete 2 years in this mission (10th April 2014), we are quite pleased that we are able to communicate our message clearly to a number of opinion makers which include journalists, professors, engineers, social  workers,  bureaucrats,  students,  doctors,  management graduates, entrepreneurs, etc. 

Vedanta “Khushi” has become a global mission and there has been increasing interest from Indians living in different parts of the world. People are engaged and spreading message of child care through direct engagement with people and also through their social media presence.

One thing we could successfully bring forward through "Khushi" has been change in the behaviour of people towards deprived children.

Vedanta “Khushi” is growing every day and so changing the society.

Vedanta as a group has worked so far with 14,000 child care centres in India – in the state of Rajasthan, Karnataka, Chattisgarh, and Odisha, reaching out to more than 500,000 deprived and underprivileged children, since 2008.

Taking cognizance of the issue, Government of India has sanctioned Rs. 129,000 crore in the current plan to be spent under the Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS) within 3 years.

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