By Mihir Dave | Documentation Officer
Greetings from Team Shaishav & Adhar
We wish to update about the activities that took place during last quarter. During the quarter door to door survey work was completed in all the five villages. We found total 660 children from age 0 to 2 and 3538 children from age 3 to 18. It was found that 945 children were not going to school. On the other hand, the balance 2593 children who were enrolled to school were not regular. While checking their average attendance in school, it was found that many of them were there on paper and were not going to schools and were engaged in either labour or were migrated with their parents to city in search of employment. We started talking with those parents whose children were not coming to school. Our aim is to motivate them and get those children enrolled to school.
We also started conducting regular meetings with community to identify local issues and make them aware about various welfare schemes provide by Government. We contacted local labour officer, Industrial and Health Security officer and helped 481 villagers to submit forms of ‘Unrecognized Workers Identification Number’ (UWIN) Cards. Though this was not our direct work related to this project, but we felt that it will indirectly benefit the children of those families which gets migrated in search of employment. This activity helped us to gain their confidence and create a very good repo.
We conducted our first major meeting on 29th September 2015 with Local District Primary Education Officer and Principals of the schools of these five villages. The purpose of the entire project was discussed in detail. Principals conveyed their concerns and suggestions about the prevailing problems they are facing. At the end of this meeting all agreed to meet on regular basis and monitor the progress to give feedback. They were quite positive about the whole idea and have formally allowed us to undertake activities in all the five schools and expressed their desire to provide quality education.
Our field team then started visiting the schools on weekly basis and started undertaking the activities with children. We experienced lot of support, co-operation and encouragement from Principal and teaching staff of all the schools. The children has also started recognizing our team member and have gelled very well with them. We have also observed that their presence increased on the day when our field staff visit the school. It was noticed that they are enjoying more with map activity (Geography). Suggestions also came to integrate regional approach in all the activities so that children can relate easily. Our regular interaction and activities with children shown a great result when 3 girls and 3 boys have actively participated in State Consultation on Creating a Gujarat Forum of Children’s Collectives for Children’s Rights held in Ahmedabad. This was a 4 days residential workshop during last week of November organized by The Child Rights Collective – Gujarat (CRC-G) in association with UNICEF – Gujarat, where 90 children of 16 different organizations from 12 districts of Gujarat participated. The idea of bringing these children under one umbrella and forming a state level forum for children. In essence, a body like the CRC-G but for children. This will ensure an optimum level of participation and enable children to directly and more effectively raise their concerns. Such a forum will afford children the chance of learning about the issues children face and what they are doing in other parts of Gujarat. Subsequently, they will work collectively to identify best practices and adapt these to the needs of their communities and use the experience to strengthen their own advocacy efforts. Given an appropriate platform, the CRC-G firmly believes that children can raise their voices more vibrantly, effectively and truthfully alongside adults. Our children went through this entire process with great amount of enthusiasm and courage. This has really benefited them in gaining lots of confidence. They will now go back to their villages and train other children who will then provide us with the prevailing situation of children in respect of education, protection and development rights.
Thank You…
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