Often we fail to see the simpler aspect of life. We are so used to complexities, that even the simplest, most obvious solutions go unnoticed to our 'strategic thinking' minds. But children, especially street children have had a rough deal. They want simplistic solutions to everyday problems. And even geniuses have stated that simplicity is the hardest thing to achieve. As we discovered.

There had been many services for children's welfare and they were not being utilized. The primary reason was that the children themselves did not know about the existence of these services. CHILDLINE did not want to fall in that trap. We wanted every child to know that help was at hand.
But there seemed to occur no foolproof solution to making the helpline number 1098 easily memorable and recalled by every child. The trouble especially being that it could even be a very young child in need of help. The problem bothered us for days.

The solution came from the most unexpected quarters. CHILDLINE has always believed in getting precious insights from grassroots level. We have believed that the children should have a say in whatever is being done for them. At one such discussion with the children, our team presented this unique problem of popularizing the number to them. The children asked us the number. On being
told the number a couple of times, a buzz started rising. Misconstruing this as
the problem of memorizing the number, the team members started feeling disheartened. It was then that a young child quipped.

"Yeh toh bahut aasaan number hai didi. Bas dus-nau-aath!" (It's an easy number didi, just ten-nine-eight!)

All the children echoed her opinion. And there it was! Dus-nau-aath. We popularized 1098 as ten-nine-eight, a number that was easy for every child to remember. A number that has now been called over three million children. Made so popular by a simple observation of a child.