Next steps

Manjari’s work in Budhpura is a work in progress. Over the past decade, Manjari and partners have worked with a range of successful strategies that fit within the context of Budhpura and that have led to changes. At the same time, Manjari and partners need to continuously adapt these strategies and respond to (new) challenges.

Continuing community engagement

Despite the visible changes in Budhpura, such as children and parents who have started ‎demanding quality education, Manjari must continue to work in the communities. With the ‎increased shift to home-based work in the cobblestone-cutting sector, Manjari is putting more effort ‎into having community mobilisers conduct family visits.

Fellowship programme

Manjari and ARAVALI have set up a fellowship programme: fellows in other geographical areas in ‎Rajasthan’s stone sector (marble, limestone) are being involved and trained to adapt the area-‎based approach to their own context. The fellows are based at a Community Based Organisation, a women’s saving and credit bank, and a trade union. Linking and learning between the fellows, Manjari and other Non-Governmental Organisations and Community Based Organisations is part of the programme.

The fellowship programme set up by Manjari and ARAVALI is working well. The organisations are being capacitated and are developing strategies to expand activities in the different mining regions, aimed at strengthening the organisation of mine workers and supporting their families.

Strengthening the quality of education

Manjari sees that there is a need for more capacity in early learning centres for young children (aged three to six). There are many young children in Budhpura it is important to reach them while they are still young.

Manjari also sees the need for teacher training, e.g. on active learning methodologies, as a sustainable solution for improving quality education in government schools as well as the motivational centres run by Manjari itself.

Organising workers

Organising workers is an important strategy in combatting child labour and ensuring decent work for adults. ‎Manjari has been talking with sandstone workers in the area. There are meetings every day at which workers’ issues are discussed. Manjari is focusing on establishing and training women’s labour groups, with the aim of strengthening and organising women ‎workers involved in cobble-making and sandstone mining. The organisation of mine workers will also be further strengthened in the mining areas where the fellowship programme is implemented.

Continuing dialogue and collaboration with businesses

Manjari and ARAVALI, in direct contact with businesses in Budhpura and the wider business ‎community and ‎stakeholders in SFNS, will continue the open dialogues and focused ‎discussions with business ‎stakeholders and the government of Rajasthan on child labour and ‎wages in cobble-making as well as working conditions in the sandstone mines.‎

Arisa continues to work on its critical dialogue and collaboration with TruStone member companies that ‎source cobbles and sandstone slabs and tiles from Rajasthan. In the coming year Arisa will ‎focus on the companies’ purchasing practices and pricing, and on strengthening the individual and ‎collective actions of the importing companies.