Magic Bus began its journey by working with young children using sports as a medium. As we spread across the country, we realised that in order to bring a generation out of poverty we needed to work with children in the age group of 12 to 18 years and youth after 18. Now we take them on a Childhood to Livelihood journey – ensuring they complete education, delay their age of marriage, and get the skills to enter organised work – in order to move them out of poverty. 

From 3000 children in 1999 in Mumbai to a direct outreach of more than 1 million children and young people, across 22 States and 80 districts in India and Asia. For the year 2018-19, outreach in India is 375,000 children and young people. We are working in close to 1961 communities and 930 schools in both urban slum clusters and remote rural areas. With 42 Livelihood centres we have trained 10,000 youth and placed 70% youth in jobs in the organised sector, career-based trainings or get self-employed, with an average salary of INR 10,287. Outreach in Nepal, Bangladesh, and Myanmar is 6000 children, in 40 communities and 31 schools with 81 Community Coordinators.

Our Childhood to Livelihood approach has the following key components:

·         Life Skills Education to improve skills like teamwork, problem solving, managing self, learning to learn and communication to enable children and young people become more resilient and show higher self-efficacy in the face of destabilisers like child marriage.

·         Education Enhancement to improve basic literacy and numeracy among children and teacher training to improve education outcomes in schools

·         Community Connect to work with children’s ecosystem – parents, school teachers, local leaders, School Management Committees – to ensure communities come together to focus on and facilitate education, gender equity and livelihood skills attainment

·         Employability Skills Education to improve financial literacy, digital literacy, spoken English and career awareness that will help young people to get a job of their choice

·         Livelihood Connect to get sector-specific training based on young peoples’ interests as well as demand from employers in different sectors along with placement and post-placement support to help young people to stay with their jobs

·         We are present in a community and a child’s life for up to 7 years

·         Nearly every programme has a parents collective and which receives Magic Bus sessions

·         Very few organization collaborate in the way we do. We actively bring in partners where we think we can’t do a good job ourselves – education partnerships are a critical part of our programme

·         Our programme is highly automated with every child tracked

·         A commitment to livelihoods is very unusual in the non-profit space

·         Our thousands of community leaders do up to 10 hours a week as volunteers

·         Our programme ensures all children a) complete secondary education b) delay their age at marriage c) are placed in salaried work in the organised sector making them economically independent and poverty free.

·         We work with children from underserved households who face interruptions in their education, leading to irregularity at school or to drop out of the education system completely

·         We harness the potential of young India by teaching them employability skills helping them get a job of their choice in the organised sector

A range of vulnerabilities prevent young people from attaining the minimum levels of education and employability skills that equip them for stable livelihoods, thus reinforcing their vulnerabilities as they attain adulthood. This problem requires a multi-layered, cross-sectoral, collaborative and responsive programme that enables young people to be better prepared for the world of work.

Children on the Magic Bus Childhood to Livelihood programme come from underserved households who face interruptions in their education, leading to irregularity at school or to drop out of the education system completely, making it impossible for them to find a job in the organised sector and move out of the poverty cycle.

Matthew Spacie founded Magic Bus and committed himself to developing a longer term programme that builds core life skills from a younger age, that are honed later into employability skills – basic skills like learning to learn, communication, managing self, teamwork and problem solving. These skills are imminently amenable to an approach that uses Sport as its basis. They are also the core employability skills a young person requires, to be employable in the organised sector, as defined by the International Labour Organization. Children use these life skills to fend off destabilizers such as child marriage and child labour that are deterrents to them completing their secondary education and moving out of poverty.

The programme ensures all children a) complete secondary education b) delay their age at marriage c) are placed in salaried work in the organised sector making them economically independent and poverty free.

At Magic Bus we believe we will enable tax paying citizens of India, who can contribute back to the country. The intervention with the participant begins when he/she is 12 years resulting in a 7 year continuum to 18 years. This intervention therefore requires a sustained, long term investment to ensure high impact on the transformation of the child.

The goal of taking every child and young person in India, out of poverty cannot be an issue worked on by one organisation. We believe there is an impotency in working alone. Therefore we need the continuous support of donors and the Government to help eradicate poverty in India.

Outcomes:

Less than 5% of girls on our programme drop out before the Class 8 vs 40% who dropout nationally. This is the minimum education that will help a child delay her age at marriage, and choose higher education instead. 

95% girls do not marry before the age of 18 vs 70% girls, nationally. This is because by bringing girls on the playground, we have been making a dent in the belief that girls and women should only be trained in household chores. 

70% of our young people are in jobs. All of them are first generation earners, their parents are mostly daily wage workers or farmers.