Kidpower

Vision

To work together to create a culture of caring, respect, and safety for all children.

Mission

To teach children to learn how to stay safe, act wisely, and believe in themselves, to work with vulnerable children and protect their rights.

Strategy

To empower children, teens, and adults against all forms of exploitation or abuse by enhancing their skills for self-protection, getting help, advocating for others, and focusing on children in difficult situations through education and care support.

Location

We are geographically focused in Visakhapatnam and the surrounding regions.

Initiatives

For the last 10 years, we have been working with rag-picking and begging communities in Visakhapatnam. The goal is to prevent child labor in these communities.

Both rag-picking and begging are hazardous occupations. We want the children not to follow their parents.

To do this, we are running child labor prevention community learning centers. We are also providing scholarships to children to go to school.

Project updates

With the support of Wipro, we have started another three community learning centers at Rajendra Nagar, Gnanapuram, and Kancharapalem. More than 150 children attend regularly for bridge and after-school support.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, we realized how vulnerable families and children are from the rag- picking and begging community. A huge number of children dropped out of school to follow their parents in these hazardous professions.

We have started working more closely with the community and trying to address different challenges. In this process, we started new learning centres, providing dry rations to vulnerable families, tailoring courses for women, health, and sanitation, etc.

Plans for the next 1-3 years

• In the last two years, Kidpower has grown by 25% in terms of budget and programs. We want to focus on making the programs sustainable in terms of funding and implementation. This includes getting enough resources for the homes and scholarship projects.
• Enhancing team capacities, especially second-level management.
• Expand programmes for children in difficult situations especially investigate ways to work with low-IQ children.
• Creating learning material for safety training and environmental issues.