A team from Gangavathi children
Parliament comprising of 90 children along with Staff participated
in the training cum exposure programme organized by VIMUKTI Pothnal
on child rights issues. The training was organized at Vimukti
premises on 24th of February 2019.
The main objective of this training was to enlighten the children
regarding children parliaments and its function. The training was on
various topics like, child labour, school dropouts, unaccompanied
children on the streets and child marriage. The most important
strategy that was thoroughly discussed was that of community
participation in eradicating these child-related problems,
especially through the participation of children. In order to elicit
community participation, all the stakeholders especially the
children, need to be trained on child rights and its violations. The
group was enlightened on the importance of creating platforms like
child rights clubs, and children’s parliaments at the Gram
Panchayath where they could exercise their rights to participate and
fight for their rights.
The children also discussed in groups about the common problems
children face in the villages and also devised new strategies based
on their learning from the training. They were introduced to the
modules that could be used for various trainings and detailed
instructions on how to form a child rights club. Individual action
plans were made about what they could do in villages. During the
exposure visits, the team had the opportunity to meet vimukti
children parliament members. The most inspiring were children from
the child rights clubs who shared the various actions they had
initiated in order to promote child rights, and to protest and stop
violations. Overall, the team was happy with the training and visit,
which was evident from their active participation and from their
evaluation. They promised that they would go back and send a revised
action plan to take forward their learnings from the visit.