Transform the Lives of Children in Gujarat, India

Shaishav, in its constant endeavour in imparting knowledge about basic rights of children and make them aware about importance of education, have formally launched their new initiative project called Udan (Flight for life)from 1st July 2014.

The basic idea of initiating Udan is to bring those underprivileged children together who have dropped out of school for either economic, family or social reasons and imparting them a fresh opportunity to restart formal education, along with providing vocational guidance, life skill trainings and identifying entrepreneurial skill. Our community workers have identified 174 eligible children this year who were dropped out and were forced into child labour in various areas of Bhavnagar. From among them, we managed to motivate 52 children who were facilitated by special tuitions, training and were provided books at our Area Resource Centre (ARC), to appear in the forthcoming State Secondary School Board Examinations to be held in March 2015. Shaishav was fortunate to have an active support from local High School Principal Association in the initial period. Teaching staff were organised through advertisement or local network connections. It is our dream to bring these children in to mainstream education and make them become independent, productive and skilled citizens.

Shaishav have recently partnered with UNICEF for giving training on child rights, child protection, education and eradication of child marriages, to their six partner organizations in Gujarat who are working in grassroots with community and children. We held three training programs in August and first week of September through our CRTRC (Child Rights Training and Resource Centre) initiative, in the district of Vadodara and Banaskantha. CRTRC serves to support and strengthen many educational and empowerment training programs that Shaishav has designed and created on Teaching & Learning Materials (TLMs) and to share the same with organisations working in similar fields.

Shaishav runs Balsena which is community based organisation designed to provide collective strengths to children aged 6 to 18 years. It is run, managed and led by children with facilitative support from Shaishav. The basic objective of Balsena is to make children aware about their rights & respect within the community, to encourage their participation for enabling qualities such as confidence, sensitivity, equality, leadership, friendship and solidarity. Balsena has approximately 1300 members constitutes 44 teams from 29 areas and schools. Each team elects their captain, vice-captain and two core group members on the basis of criteria decided by themselves. These children forms the council, there they elect their president and vice president, who represents Balsena’s children voice nationally and internationally. In first week of August 2014, Balsena underwent their 12^th such election, where their representative were elected. Shivani became the President. Usually the Vice-President is of the opposite sex but since Asha was at the second place, the children decided to have both Asha and Akash as Vice- Presidents. However, Balsena maintained its long-standing record that the President is a girl. Out of 12 elections, 10 times the girls have become the president. This is a classic example of girls’ empowerment.

Balsena have also developed among themselves, a savings bank scheme, which enables them to save money independently, teaching them financial responsibility. It helps them understand importance of saving money instead of spending it for leisure and other non-productive things. This money is generally a pocket money received by them from parents. They deposit this money in to their savings accounts on a regular basis and withdraw when they requires for paying their school fees or buying books, uniforms, school stationeries etc. In first week of August 2014, Balsena prepared and presented their annual report and audited accounts for its savings account members. The total savings made by the members since inception of this scheme is about INR 8 Lacs and current balance as on date is about INR 1.2 Lacs.

The vision of Shaishav is to create a safe, supportive and responsive society that upholds the protection, rights and dignity of every child in India (as defined by the law). This is to be achieved by establishing effective prevention and early intervention measures, strengthening treatment support services and building partnerships. We do this by engaging with all sectors of society upon whom the wellbeing of children depends, in initiatives that will bring about these changes. Shaishav have launch Child Protection Policy (CPP) on 2^nd August 2014 in the Bhavnagar district which is the first district in the state of Gujarat. This policy is designed as outlined by the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) under Article 19 and various legal statutes of the prevailing law in India. The launching of the CPP was done in presence of hundreds of teachers and stakeholders in the presence of the UNICEF chief of the state of Gujarat, the District Collector, Former Director of Professors’ Training Institute Dr. Bhadrayu Vaccharajani, representatives of Teachers’ Union, Principals’ Union, School Management, various government departments, etc. In the days to come, we will organize training with the members of Child Protection Committee members.

Thank You

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