WHY CHILDREN'S PARTICIPATION ?
I remember the first time I was part of a discussion on “children’s participation”. This was when I had joined Plan International in 1998. Participation? For what? How? Children are children and hence they should be spending time in studying and playing, most people would feel. This was a session where we were being persuaded to integrate children’s perspectives in everything we did to enhance the quality of our programmes.
It was then that a series of trainings were planned to help us understand the concept better. We went to Kundapur in southern Karnataka, where The Concerned for Working Children (CWC), an organisation working on children’s issues and their rights, was based. They had several years of experience of organising children and had been successful in getting adults around to accepting children as ‘stakeholders’.
It was indeed amazing. Over a period of one week, we interacted with a group of children, all of whom were working children and hence had missed out largely on formal education opportunities. They were obviously from poor families. But one thing that was common among them was the courage and confidence with which they had organised themselves, articulating their views and concerns and more importantly, determined to identify more and more such children into groups. These children would then regularly interact with adults in panchayats (local government), schools, at places of work, with parents – to ensure that children were heard. Some of them had even shared the dais with ministers, bureaucrats, film stars and other influential people to voice their concerns. Some of them were members of task forces and working groups at various levels to provide their inputs on major policy documents that would influence the lives of children. And some even had the opportunity to travel abroad and represent the concerns of working children in India. One of the important areas of their work was to work closely with the panchayats to ensure that these panchayats are child labour free - no mean achievement in a country where there are reportedly 100 million working children, according to some estimates !
It was the same enthusiasm that I saw among the children of Sangam Vihar, a slum settlement in New Delhi, where CASP, an NGO had been working for years. Over a period of time, they had decided to be more proactive and not depend upon their parents and other adults alone to move ahead in life. They stared managing community libraries, spread health awareness messages, ensured that children who had dropped out of school returned and even raised sensitive issues such as drug abuse, discrimination against girl children and HIV/AIDS. They had organised themselves into bal panchayats (an informal forum for children, modelled on local government). They took pride in organising their annual child rights workshops where their counterparts from over 10 states would assemble in Delhi. They then had interactions with individuals from various walks of life who listened to their presentations and were asked to respond on specific issues.
I remember the first time I was part of a discussion on “children’s participation”. This was when I had joined Plan International in 1998. Participation? For what? How? Children are children and hence they should be spending time in studying and playing, most people would feel. This was a session where we were being persuaded to integrate children’s perspectives in everything we did to enhance the quality of our programmes.
It was then that a series of trainings were planned to help us understand the concept better. We went to Kundapur in southern Karnataka, where The Concerned for Working Children (CWC), an organisation working on children’s issues and their rights, was based. They had several years of experience of organising children and had been successful in getting adults around to accepting children as ‘stakeholders’.
It was indeed amazing. Over a period of one week, we interacted with a group of children, all of whom were working children and hence had missed out largely on formal education opportunities. They were obviously from poor families. But one thing that was common among them was the courage and confidence with which they had organised themselves, articulating their views and concerns and more importantly, determined to identify more and more such children into groups. These children would then regularly interact with adults in panchayats (local government), schools, at places of work, with parents – to ensure that children were heard. Some of them had even shared the dais with ministers, bureaucrats, film stars and other influential people to voice their concerns. Some of them were members of task forces and working groups at various levels to provide their inputs on major policy documents that would influence the lives of children. And some even had the opportunity to travel abroad and represent the concerns of working children in India. One of the important areas of their work was to work closely with the panchayats to ensure that these panchayats are child labour free - no mean achievement in a country where there are reportedly 100 million working children, according to some estimates !
It was the same enthusiasm that I saw among the children of Sangam Vihar, a slum settlement in New Delhi, where CASP, an NGO had been working for years. Over a period of time, they had decided to be more proactive and not depend upon their parents and other adults alone to move ahead in life. They stared managing community libraries, spread health awareness messages, ensured that children who had dropped out of school returned and even raised sensitive issues such as drug abuse, discrimination against girl children and HIV/AIDS. They had organised themselves into bal panchayats (an informal forum for children, modelled on local government). They took pride in organising their annual child rights workshops where their counterparts from over 10 states would assemble in Delhi. They then had interactions with individuals from various walks of life who listened to their presentations and were asked to respond on specific issues.
I was once asked to be a respondent on one of the panels and let me assure you, it was quite an unnerving experience for me ( I am sure the children noticed the discomfort and were pretty amused about it !). The issues they raised ranged from reservation policy of the government to the inadequacy of government resources in promoting elementary education! And these were children who lived in settlements that were deprived of even the most basic facilities and belonged to families with very insecure livelihoods. Many of them were not even sure if they would continue their education because of economic compulsions on them to go out and earn to complement their families’ income. But they had certainly arrived as thinking citizens !
I remember the time we asked the Samuha (one of the NGOs that Plan International partnered with) staff team to hold a consultation with children when they were planning a watershed programme in some villages of Raichur district in Karnataka. They were not convinced at all in the first place. Children? And watersheds? It was a ‘technical’ programme, some said. “We work closely with the local community in planning any such programme, so why do we need to consult separately with children”? some others queried. “After all, wouldn’t the adults be able to easily represent the views of children”?
But on our continued persuasion, they yielded and decided to give it an honest try. They met with small groups of children, for which, they got help from teachers, village workers and just about anyone who could help with this process. This went on for a few weeks. It did take some time for the children to warm up. After all, whoever did ever ask them for their views ? They were only told what to do and how, and rarely explained why ! The Samuha team also took some time to lose their inhibitions and communicate with children at their level. Gradually, they began seeing the results. “The men in our village would ask for timber trees, so that they can sell the wood and make money. The women in our village will ask for fodder trees and trees that can yield fuel. But as children, we want fruit trees. We barely get to eat fruits and we know some fruits can grow very well in our soil”, they asserted strongly. They even seemed willing to do the work of planting fruit trees and tending them.
This then became an integral part of the programme. The local government school headmaster also agreed to allow fruit trees to be planted on the school grounds, which was otherwise hardly put to any use. Moreover, it was part of the area that constituted a 'watershed' under the programme. It took only some time for the Samuha team to recognise and appreciate the children’s enthusiasm for the programme. They used to hold regular meetings, assign responsibilities amongst themselves and monitor progress. This became such an enthusing example that ‘bal aranyas’ or children’s forests became an regular part of Samuha’s watershed development programme.
But on our continued persuasion, they yielded and decided to give it an honest try. They met with small groups of children, for which, they got help from teachers, village workers and just about anyone who could help with this process. This went on for a few weeks. It did take some time for the children to warm up. After all, whoever did ever ask them for their views ? They were only told what to do and how, and rarely explained why ! The Samuha team also took some time to lose their inhibitions and communicate with children at their level. Gradually, they began seeing the results. “The men in our village would ask for timber trees, so that they can sell the wood and make money. The women in our village will ask for fodder trees and trees that can yield fuel. But as children, we want fruit trees. We barely get to eat fruits and we know some fruits can grow very well in our soil”, they asserted strongly. They even seemed willing to do the work of planting fruit trees and tending them.
This then became an integral part of the programme. The local government school headmaster also agreed to allow fruit trees to be planted on the school grounds, which was otherwise hardly put to any use. Moreover, it was part of the area that constituted a 'watershed' under the programme. It took only some time for the Samuha team to recognise and appreciate the children’s enthusiasm for the programme. They used to hold regular meetings, assign responsibilities amongst themselves and monitor progress. This became such an enthusing example that ‘bal aranyas’ or children’s forests became an regular part of Samuha’s watershed development programme.
No comments:
Post a Comment