Child Education and Child Rights:

Children are the backbone of any society- Lok Prerna is a believer of this principle, too. On the other hand, one third of the total population of India is children, still the children of India are the most disadvantaged, underprivileged sub population of India and the Jharkhand state not an exceptional case, too. Though, India adopted the policy of Child Right of Education and establish atleast one primary school in every large village, still the total literacy rate in the Jharkhand state is as low as 38.9% only (2001 census) while in Deoghar district this rate is still lower to be 32.3%. The one reason behind this is the conditions for successful learning are conceivably awful in the area of primary education. Usually the teacher’s student’s ration in the primary school is 1:55, but the majority of these teachers are neither highly qualified nor they took any initiative to regularize student in the school by adopting joyful learning methods. On the other hand, though all the primary school consists of a class room, but most of the school are running with out the drinking water facility, toilet facility, school yard and some times also schools are running with out the most

necessary learning materials like chalk, boards, books, etc. which is often boring and tiring for the pupil. To add, the children get minimum opportunity to recreational activities in the school premises or experience of joyful learning which depreciates their academic interest, leading to poor performance, drop out and consequently absorption in some form of labour. Such girls children are the worst sufferers since they have to shoulder much of household responsibilities and the gender discriminatory practices also limits their access to schools. The domestic chores of the girl child include cleaning utensils, sweeping house surroundings, nursing siblings, assisting in preparation of food, cattle grazing and working as maid servant in the nearby houses or elsewhere available. The off school girl child remain involved in the aforesaid domestic chores and the average time spent by a girl child in 8-10 hours in a day.

Keeping this in mind, Lok Prerna started talking initiatives for the campaign of child education. Firstly, in the very beginning of the organization, Lok Prerna started running some Non Formal Education (NFE) for children where they arrange special coaching class for the children, especially who belongs to the child labour group and for those who are still not enrolled in the formal schools. After that, the organization felt the need of enroll all the left out children of school going age to the formal school and started campaign on that. This initiative create a massive impact on the community where the parent started sending their both, girls and boys to the school after getting awareness on the importance of education. In some other cases, where parent could not motivated through the campaign to send their children into school, there the children took the initiative to mobilize those parents as they start sending their children to the school which also made a very good impact in those areas.

Other than the school enrollment programme, since the 2007, Lok Prerna felt, only the school enrollment programme is not enough to regularize all the children, from the child labour group, from the left out group and also from the dropped out group, to make them regular in the in the school. Accordingly, Lok Prerna started running advancement coaching class for all those children who have a bit shyness and fear to go to school, also hesitate to ask any question to the teachers, have some language problem and also for those children, for whom 45 minutes class not sufficient enough to understand any matter. These initiatives able to build up a support system for all these children to get promotion in the next class. Lok Prerna organizes these kinds of remedial coaching camps twice in an academic year, once before the half yearly examination and the other before the annual examination.

Besides that, Lok Prerna also started providing school aid supports like- dress, copy, pen, books, etc. to all those girl students whose parents haven’t any possibility to pay for learning aids and due to shortage of funds, parents first send their boys in the school and the girls couldn’t get any chance to go to the school. Lok Prerna also provided the support of library in all of its operational area for those children who become dropped out only for the inability to purchase school books.

Since the last four years, Lok Prerna also took initiative to making functional of Village Education

Committees (VECs) in order to guarantee the continuous school attendance of all the children of the respective community by motivating the parents to send their children regularly to the school and also to bring cooperation between community and the education authority in the qualitative improvement of the school teaching.

In addition to that, to ensure the rights and entitlement of all these children and to prepare them on their own for their future roles and responsibilities as the bearer of community as they can get the chance to peruse development process and perceive their own interest representation actively, Lok Prerna Started to organize such children through the formation of Bal Samsad (Child Club) in the rural Deoghar District. This is to bring the interest of children, opportunities and potentials more in the range of vision of communities. Lok Prerna formed a total number of fifty one such Bal Samsads consist of 3264 children in the Devipur, Deoghar, Mohanpur and Sarwan block of Deoghar district. In the regular meeting various issues related to the health & hygiene, education, child rights and child law violation like child labour, early marriage, domestic violence, sexual abuse, etc. discussed with the children. Time to time Lok Prerna also arrange child seminars with the concern government authorities where children focused on the plan changes in the conversion of government programmes for food upkeeps, high quality education and the protection of child rights.

Lok Prerna also trained these children in the Street Plays which is a very attractive way to reach the other children and community for the awareness generation on the different issues of child rights and the violation of child rights. Now the children of Bal Samsads become such efficient that they started to organize street plays to aware peoples and to get their demand on their own.