A PRACTICAL EXPERIENCE WITH BOSCO BOYS

The Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) collaborated with Bosco Boys Home, (BBH) Borivali to train its students and to give them some practical fieldwork experience in the sector of Youth at risk and Children in need of care and protection. This year two first year students of Master in Social Work (MSW) from TISS: Mr. Paul Mung Ja a BA graduate and Ms. Mugdha Cheemakurthy a BCom graduate joined BBH as part of their fieldwork training. They were placed at BBH under the supervision of Ms.Trupti Karkera and Dr. Poonam Gulalia who was the field coordinator from TISS the school of Social Work and Mr. Datta Gade representing the Social Work sector of BBH.

“TISS was established in 1936 as the Sir Dorabji Tata Graduate School of Social Work. Since its inception, the vision of the TISS has been to be an institution of excellence in higher education that continually responds to changing social realities through the development and application of knowledge, towards creating a people-centred, ecologically sustainable and just society that promotes and protects dignity, equality, social justice and human rights for all. So it was a nice initiative to have these students do their fieldwork at BBH which is mainly an

orphanage for boys mainly from the street, children of CSWs (Commercial Sex Workers), children from difficult backgrounds and those in conflict with law situations,” said Mr. Gade an MSW with 18 years’ experience in field of YAR, De-addition programme and a member of Child Welfare Committee (CWC). Ms. Karkera shared, “The students were placed for a fieldwork of two semesters. The first semester consisting of July to September and the next from November to February.”

While asking on the experience she got during her days at BBH Ms.Cheemakurthy expressed, “It a learning experience. We were involved in lots of activities like case studies of individual boys, group session therapy session for boys on education, health and hygiene, discipline and personality development, outreach programmes, school visit, documentation, exposure visits, case filing and teaching but the highlight was the Bal mela of which we part of the animating group.”

Mr. Mung Ja shared, “We had this time to apply all what we learned in theory into practice. We had lots of fun but also some moments when we tested to our limits by the boys. I really enjoyed my time here at BBH taking sessions on topics like Human knot, Free Art, Non- verbal and non- violent communications. I believe that BBH strongly believes in breaking the cycle of creating a second generation of marginalized people by proving opportunities to the young to experience a broad range of innovative and educational activites.”