By Matters India Reporter
Bhopal: Children attending a recent program in a central Indian city have resolved to find solutions to various issues affecting India’s future generation.
“We can solve our issues by recognizing them and making collective efforts themselves,” asserted Pallavi Kumari, one of the 185 participants of a leadership training program held in Bhopal to promote rights of children.
The August 19 program was organized by Uday (dawn) Social Development Society , an NGO of the Holy Spirit Sisters based in the city, at their St. Raphael’s Co- Ed School.
Pallavi, a leader of Baal Panchayat (child parliament) in Bhopal, highlighted various child issues such as lack of infrastructure and delay in regularizing teachers in their schools.
The girl also urged children to take up advocacy by becoming agents of change and networking with others to resolve child issues collectively.
Mohan Sharma, a member of the Child Welfare Committee in Bhopal a guest at the program, addressed children on the importance of education and healthy life. He assured the children his committee’s support from their welfare.
The participants were students of two to eight grades.
Sister Lizy Thomas, director of the NGO, says more children now evince interest in attending their coaching programs. The annual program organized around Independence Day celebrations. “Since children are busy in their schools on the Independence Day, we conduct ours a little later,” Sister Thomas explained to Matters India.
She claims the coaching as well as their “‘Stop Child Exploitation’ campaign ensure “quality of education” and reduce the absence of children in the school.
Together with academic performance, they encourage children to join extracurricular activities. She said the latest program aimed to strengthen the children’s parliament constituted by kids from slums. The program also gave the message of Independence Day ‘develop children as agents of change.’
Three Bal Panchayat members participated in the program as the resource persons.
Sheetal, a program officer of the NGO, explained to the participants various constitutional as well as legal rights of the children. She shared the functions of government institutions and related provisions to check violation of child rights.
She also explained the process of filing complaints in case of child rights violation to these institutes in cases such physical, mental, psychological harassment. The participants were seen asking questions related to their rights.
Sister Thomas urged the children to progress ahead and achieve laurels. The Indian Constitution recognizes children as citizens of the country and it also covers most rights included in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child as Fundamental Rights, the nun explained.
The nun quoted the Annual Status of Education Report 2016 that revealed that only 38.7 percent of fifth graders could read textbooks of second grade and that merely 19.4 percent could do division.
She said the objective of their program was to improve the quality in education of school-going children of Bhopal slums, especially the slow learners.
The NGO daily conducts coaching for slum children going to government and private schools after their classes at the Church institution.
According to Sister Thomas, the government has initiated various projects to fulfil basic needs of a school along with quality of education under Right To Education Act 2009. Additional Activity Based Learning method provides children to upgrade themselves with their own capacity.
The children staged various cultural items, participated in games and sang patriotic songs.