Child Rights – Banwasi Vikas Ashram

Every child must get the required environment and opportunity to grow, educate and live a healthy life. We must help them for this.

Our intervention:

PREVENTION OF CHILD MARRIAGE

Banwasi Vikas Ashram in Giridih, with the support of the Kailash Satyarthi Children’s Foundation, is working tirelessly to eradicate child marriage in the Giridih district. Currently, Banwasi Vikas Ashram is working in 7 Blocks (Giridih, Bengabad, Gandey, Jamua, Bagodar, Dumri, Pirtand) and 150 villages in Giridih district. This report provides an overview of our activities and achievements during the reporting period from May 2023 to January 2024.

According to NHFS-5 (2019-21), Giridih district is at 4th position in terms of child marriage in Jharkhand state.

The impact of the child marriage campaign in Giridih district of Jharkhand includes:

Reduced incidence of child marriages: The campaign likely contributed to a decrease in the number of child marriages occurring in the district by raising awareness about the negative consequences and legal implications of such practices.
Increased awareness: The campaign likely increased awareness among parents, community leaders, and young people about the importance of education, health, and the rights of children, thereby empowering them to resist pressure to engage in child marriages.
Improved access to education: By discouraging child marriages, the campaign likely helped more children, especially girls, to stay in school longer, leading to improved educational outcomes and increased opportunities for economic empowerment.
Enhanced community involvement: The campaign likely fostered community dialogue and engagement on the issue of child marriage, encouraging collective action and support for interventions aimed at preventing this harmful practice.
Sensitization of government officials and PRI members.
Mukhiya took pledge and sign the Child marriage Free Village Ghosna Patra in the Gram Sabha and passed the 10 resolutions.

Overall, the campaign likely had a positive impact on reducing the prevalence of child marriage in Giridih district and promoting the well-being and rights of children. Ongoing monitoring and evaluation efforts will be important to assess the long-term effectiveness of the campaign and identify areas for further improvement.

Key Activities:

Awareness Campaigns:

We conducted numerous awareness campaigns in schools, communities, and remote villages to educate parents, children, and community leaders about the harmful consequences of child marriage.
Our team organized street plays, workshops, and seminars to raise awareness on child rights and the legal consequences of child marriage.

Capacity Building:

To empower local communities, we conducted training sessions for local leaders, teachers, and volunteers on the legal framework surrounding child marriage and child rights.
We equipped them with the knowledge and skills to identify and report cases of child marriage effectively.

Community Engagement:

We fostered community engagement by establishing Child Rights Protection Committees (VLCPC) and Bal Manch in villages to monitor and prevent child marriages with the help of PRI Members.
These committees played a crucial role in creating a protective environment for children.

S.No	District	Block	Panchayat	Village	No. of Meetings with PRI Members	Bal Manch	VLCPC	No. of Schools Engaged
1	1	7	41	150	250	150	150	350

Rescue and Rehabilitation:

Working closely with local authorities and law enforcement agencies, we successfully rescued many children from the risk of forced marriage.
These rescued children were provided psychological support by BVA, Giridih, and linked them to sponsorship and other government schemes.

Legal Advocacy:

We continued to advocate for stricter enforcement of laws against child marriage and engaged with local authorities to ensure that perpetrators of child marriage were held accountable.

Pledge:

People are taking pledge against child marriage with the help of mobile application.

Social Mapping:

With the help of social mapping we identified the vulnerable group of the village.
Linked the identified vulnerable groups to the government schemes.

Achievements:

Prevented Child Marriages: Through our awareness campaigns and community engagement efforts, we prevented 212 child marriages during the reporting period.
Rescue and Rehabilitation: We successfully rescued and rehabilitated 212 children who were at risk of forced marriage, providing them with a safe and nurturing environment.
Increased Awareness: Our campaigns reached out to over 41,564 individuals, raising awareness about the negative impacts of child marriage and the importance of child rights through 1260 activities (meetings, rallies, and awareness programs).
Community Involvement: The establishment of 140 VLCPC and 140 Bal Manch in several villages has empowered communities to take a proactive stance against child marriage.
Pledge: 211,278 people took pledge against child marriage with the help of mobile

application.

S.No.

District

Activities

(Awareness, Rally,

Meeting etc)

Participants

No. of Child Marriage Stopped

No. of Undertaking taken

Sponsorship filled

Pledge

Giridih

1260

41564

212

211,278

Challenges:

Cultural and societal norms continue to be a major challenge, making it necessary to address root causes and change mindsets over time.
Limited resources sometimes hindered our ability to scale up our activities.

Conclusion:

Banwasi Vikas Ashram, with the invaluable support of the Kailash Satyarthi Children Foundation, remains committed to the cause of creating a Child Marriage Free Giridih. Despite the challenges, our efforts have yielded positive results, and we are determined to build on these achievements in the coming years. We express our gratitude to all our partners, volunteers, government officials, and donors who have contributed to this noble cause. Together, we can ensure a brighter and safer future for Giridih

Primary Education

Residential bridge course for schooling of disadvantaged adolescent girls.
Capacity building of non-residence bridge camp resource persons & teachers of SSA.
Local resource pool developed to support the mainstream education in the area.

Quality improvement in local education system.

Education

Education is the core intervention area of Banwasi Vikas Ashram and the organization has been working on this issue since its inception. Banwasi educational initiatives are related to community mobilization, capacity building of educational staff & volunteers, content diversity and service delivery with innovative pedagogies for at-risk children.

COMMUNITY MOBILIZATION:

The community mobilization initiatives of Banwasi dates back to early periods of Bihar education project. The organizational efforts to promotion and capacity building of village/panchayat educational committees continuously grew with advent of janshala/SPEED, Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan(SSA) and JRD Tata Trust. So far it has promoted more than 500 VECs./SMCs The VECs/SMCs involvement in micro-planning for primary education was one of the cornerstone of people’s participation in govt. schools that resulted into increased enrolment at school and community involvement in infrastructure maintenance.

BRIDGE CAMP AT-RISK GIRLS:

Residential bridge camp/Special Training Center is one of the pilot initiatives of Banwasi in Jharkhand to help adolescent out of school girls in pursuance of primary education and their continuing education.

These girls are from poor social and economic background and have been deprived of educational facilities due to peer age mismatch. The bridge camp has its own curriculum and teaching methods that helps the girls to acquire minimum levels of learning of class 1 to 5 in a short time span of one year in residential mode. So far the camp has been able to educate and help 2000 odd girls in continuing education with basic life skills. As an accredited centre of National Open School. Banwasi also helps disadvantaged boys and girls in continuing their education.

CAPACITY BUILDING:

Banwasi as an Educational resource centre is significantly contributed to the local education system in Jharkhand. With UNICEF, CINI, SSA, Reach India (US Aid) and JRD Tata Trust collaboration it has developed a quality educational package for capacity building of bridge course educators in Jharkhand. it has come out with some good quality educational materials, modules and TLM that makes the learning interesting and easier.

Lok-Pahal program (an initiative to qualitative aspects in local education system) supported by JRD Tata Trust

Banwasi Vikas Ashram started ‘LOK – PAHAL’ program in the year 08-09 and subsequently run the program till 2012-2013 for qualitative change in 120 elementry schools in the block –Bagodar of district, Giridih. This program is supported by JRDT trust. This program includes residential bridge course center for 100 at-risk adolescent girls. BVA is providing technical assistance training of teachers, micro-planning for primary education and curriculum / content development. It has developed a variety of teaching and learning materials, practices and activities which adds to the pleasurable learning and teaching methods. The organization has inbuilt system of computerized accounting for its programmes, effective MIS and individual child tracking system in place.

1098 Tele Helpline Model

Support Organization: CHILDLINE India foundation

Project area: 3 block of Giridih District

A phone number that spells hope for millions of children across India, CHILDLINE is India’s first 24-hour, free, emergency phone service for children in need of aid and assistance. Whether you are a concerned adult or a child, you can dial 1098, the toll free number to access our services. We not only respond to the emergency needs of children but also link them to services for their long-term care and rehabilitation. We have, to date, reached out to over three million children across the nation through such calls.

Objective:

To reach out to every child in need of care and protection by responding to emergencies on 1098. Awareness about CHILDLINE 1098 amongst every child.
To provide a platform of networking amongst or generations and to provide linkages to support systems that facilitate the rehabilitation of children in need of care and protection.
To work together with the Allied Systems (Police, Health Care, Juvenile Justice, Transport, Legal,
Education, Communication, Media, Political and the Community) to create child friendly systems.
To advocate services for children that are inaccessible or non existent.

Activities undertaken in the program:

Program campaigning and promotion in 3 blocks of Giriidh Distrit.
Awareness generation program with community member at Panchayati Raj Institution Member, school teachers, children, local administration.
Open house meeting with school children
Developing children club
Several engagement activities: Panchayat engagement, school children engagement, SHG engagement, Health engagement.

Child right and Child protection through partnership with CHILD line foundation, community & government of India & Jharkhand: – Banwasi Vikas Ahram(BVA) is a sub center in 3 blocks(Bagodar,Dumri and Saria) of Gridih district in association with CHILDLINE India Foundation of India for the safety of child right/child protection or other related issues. There are many cases has been resolved on making this intervention around the areas. The Children’s right has been raised and being saved their rights with active support of concerned government authorities. Dial–1098 to save or help a child from the sickness, loneliness, providing shelter, being beaten brutally on the way, child labor without any reward and any children without address or guardian found around. Anybody can call on 1098; their privacy will be kept secret.

Past Associations :

BVA association with the Government, UN agency-International agency-NGOS

Child Rights and Child Protection and Quility Education Related Programme

Lok-Pahal program (an initiative to qualitative aspects in local education system) supported by JRD Tata Trust

Association with UNICEF

Banwasi Vikas Ashram had been a partner with UNICEF, Patna Office to execute two years residential bridge camp programme for disadvantaged adolescents’ girls who were completely deprived of primary education. The programme was run for two consecutive academic years from 2002 to till 2004.

In the year of 2006-07 another programme was run in the 11 district of Jharkhand to develop quality education package for non-residential bridge course run under SSA and develop Master trainers at the district level for capacity building of teacher through training.

UNICEF –Govt–Banwasi Vikas Ashram has been instrumental in developing contents for SSA non residential bridge camps in Jharkhand that includes ‘Prayas,’ the Primer for condensed course and ‘Abhyas,’ the exercise- book with worksheets for self-learning and self- assessment by the children and a training Manual for trainers which were accepted warmly in their original forms by the teachers, education workers and the SSA authorities. Recently the Organization has also introduced RUBRIC and other Continuous Assessment tools for the non-residential bridge course system of SSA through Quality Education Package.

Educational Activities: Banwasi has long term involvement in primary education programme right from inception of our organization i.e., approximately two decade ago. The organization has successfully managed educational programmes in the field of service delivery, community mobilization, capacity building and content development. So far it has made direct interventions with more than 6000 children for their meaningful education and mainstreaming to formal education.

A UN- GOI intervention for primary schooling Janshala Programme

Under the UN and Govt. of India programme ‘Janshala,’ BVA has significantly contributed to community mobilization, capacity building of teachers with joyful learning methods, pedagogy, evaluation methods and girl-schooling. In this programme, BVA has jointly worked with the state education mechanism and involved itself with micro-planning process in 300 village panchayats in 03 districts of Bihar and 01 district of Jharkhand.

BVA facilitated the capacity building exercise and also the development of a 20-day micro-planning module, which has now been adopted by Jharkhand Education Project Council, Ranchi in the same form for its interventions in other areas.

SPEED (Bihar)

Banwasi Vikas Ashram has been associated with SPEED since its inception and has significantly contributed to the training of VECs & animators in 8 districts of the-then undivided Bihar.

Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (Jharkhand Education Project Council)

Banwasi Vikas Ashram has established and managed 100 EGS centers in 100 villages in Bagodar block of Giridih district during the year 2003-04 and handed over then to SSA authority for their continuation. Presently, BVA has been actively involved in content development for SSA non-residential bridge camps and the capacity building of their educators in 11 districts of Jharkhand.

Bihar Education Project-BVA was actively involved with the BEP Project, and conducted

micro planning for education in 150 villages of 3 community development blocks of Chatra

district.

UNESCO

To disseminate good practices in girls’ schooling, BVA has demonstrated the application of Pleasurable Learning & Teaching methods. BVA, in this connection, provided Resource Persons to develop Master Trainers from and among the school teachers at the national workshop conducted by UNESCO at Ferozabad (U.P).

REACH INDIA Programme (USAID)

Residential bridge camp supported initially by UNICEF and subsequently by REACH INDIA has emerged as a local resource centre in this region for schooling of adolescent girls at-risk and capacity building of education institutions in pleasurable learning and teaching methods, individual student tracking, content development and educational management..

IGSSS/ National Education Group

With the support of National Education Group and IGSSS, BVA has run 30 non-formal education centers in Katkamsandi block of Hazaribag district.

Education to Adolescent girls at risk level:

More than 1200 at risk adolescent girls belong to excluded groups completed their primary education and 90% of them mainstreamed for higher education. They also received life-skills training and also learnt lesson to free their mind from social dogmas and customs and also untouchebility problem. This program is supported by UNICEF, REACH India, SSA and now JRDT Trust for last 12 years.

Capacity Building of Community Based Institutions in Primary Education

With help of BEP, SPEED and SSA; Banwasi Vikas Ashram has promoted more than VEC in 350 villages of 6 districts in Bihar and Jharkhand.

The training and follow up micro planning activities helped local schools and educational planning process with need based inputs, demands and plan. It also helped education department in effective budgeting and resource utilization.

Capacity Building on Quality Education

Training of teachers, special educators has helped them to improve class room activities. The performance of children and educational environment has significantly improved in residential/ non residential bridge courses of SSA in 11 districts of Jharkhand and identified Govt. schools with support from UNICEF