This is fascinating – a bank in India run by street children for other street children.

  • Encourage saving:By providing a safe place to hold their money, which the children identify as a key benefit and by encouraging regular saving and accumulating funds for their future.
  • Develop sustainable livelihoods:Offer loans to members of the Bank who are saving regularly. This is equivalent to a traditional cooperative banking, but with two important distinctions:
  • Build Life skills:The CDB provides an opportunity for the children to develop the life skills such as team working, taking responsibility, self-confidence, communication skills, and project management skills.
  • Build Entrepreneurial skills:Create a way of channeling those very entrepreneurial skills that are needed for survival and directing these into income generation and employment, which can be linked to skills training being provided by organizations working with these children.
  • Capacity Building. A network for training, support and learning has been created. In order to facilitate the development of the CDB programme, a structure for providing training and support to the Banks is established, which encourages sharing and cross-learning and the involvement of children and their experience and ideas in this process.
  • Research and Documentation is an integral part of the intervention to strengthen the knowledge base on the issue of child protection and also to develop evidence based advocacy strategies.
  • Ensure sustainability. With efforts to set up mechanisms to carry forward strategies tested and lessons learned, CDB is designed and implemented in partnership with the community and civil society.
  • Ensure replicability. CDB intends to provide a simple and successful model for enhancing the lives and livelihoods of street and working children both because it provides a channel for saving and because it makes loans for livelihoods. This is a replicable model, which can then be extended further


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