By Ben Atkinson | Volunteer
The last few weeks have seen a very exciting development. After many months of working with a large number of donors, government officials and many other people, we have finally secured a new building to house our work. This new building will hold all of Shaishav’s office based operations, but most importantly, it will allow our Child Rights Training and Resource Centre (CRTRC) to develop into the state-wide source of experience, knowledge and materials that we had envisaged.
The CRTRC was originally created in 2009, and has already been very successful. The centre has supported and strengthened Shaishav’s many educational programmes, and enabled us to develop and expand the collective capacities of our staff and beneficiaries, as well as those of other organisations.
However, despite these achievements, the CRTRC has been limited by a lack of dedicated space in which it can conduct its operations. It has needed space in which it can conduct its training workshops, carry out its advocacy and networking roles, and better cooperate with other Shaishav programmes. It is for these reasons that the purchase of a new building was so necessary. The building will provide Shaishav with a large multi-purpose hall, an administrative wing, small catering facilities, audio/visual learning resources and a large library and resource centre. There is also a large outdoor space that can be used for various programmes.
More space will provide many benefits, both for the children and the greater community. We will be able to provide a greater level of safety and security to children in an environment without the risk of injury. We will also be able to offer a much higher level of stability to many of our programmes, providing us with a permanently available space for events, rather than having to continuously search for something suitable on the dates that we need it. Finally, the new building will allow Shaishav to develop and expand on our work surrounding child rights and participation, free from the constraints of our current small office. We will be able to offer training sessions for large groups of people of over 100 or more, whereas currently we can only work with about 30 people at a time. Our aim is to hold large residential training workshops in the future. We will be inaugurating the new building on 26th January 2013.
In other news, Balsena held it’s Presidential election on 30th September, in which all members of the Balsena Council participated. Members discussed the strengths of each of the seven candidates and voted based on a variety of different criteria including speaking skills, Hindi and English language knowledge, ability to give and receive training, ability to attend events outside of Bhavnagar and whether they can spare time for these responsibilities. Voting was undertaken using the weighted average ranking system.
Gender equality is fully ingrained into Balsena and there is always a gender balance in Balsena’s leaders. If the President is a girl then the Vice-President must be a boy and vice-versa. Of Balsena’s ten Presidents so far, eight have been girls. This year Drashti won the election and became President and Pankaj became Vice-President.
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