Our advisory board member ,child rights activist and author writes about CACR ...
"A
group of citizens in Mumbai get together and rally for the rights of children.
CACR
– a not for profit entity takes birth and commits itself to make the right to
education a reality for every child.
The Constitution (Eighty-sixth Amendment) Act,
2002 inserted Article 21-A in the
Constitution of India to provide free and
compulsory education of all children in the age group of 6-14 years as a Fundamental Right in a manner as the State may, by law, determine.
The Right of Children to Free and
Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009, which represents the
consequential legislation envisaged under Article 21-A, means that every child has a right to full time
elementary education of satisfactory and equitable quality in a formal school that
satisfies certain essential norms and standards. With this, India has moved
forward to a rights based framework that casts a legal obligation on the
Central and State Governments to implement this fundamental child right.
This is a landmark
occurrence for the fate of children in India. Children have been guaranteed
their right to quality elementary education by the state with the help of
families and communities. And
this brings us to the questions, where do we stand in all this? How can we be
involved? What can we do?
The Act calls for 25% reservation of seats in unaided school as well for children of
economically weaker sections. And when we say all children, we must include
children with special needs and differently abled children. Thus an environment
of inclusive education is desired and demanded. Also, the RTE states that every
school must have a School Management Committee (SMC)
consisting of school administration, parents and community members to manage
the school and ensure that the children receive quality education. We need to come forward and participate in
the functioning of our neighbourhood municipal schools! This thought was
conceived and executed a few years back via the volunteer program of a leading
child rights NGO. The project grew and organically emerged as a formal association
of citizens.
CACR – Citizen’s Association for Child
Rights was registered in 2013 to bring together like-minded people to work
with the education department to improve the BMC school system in Mumbai.
Four years since the
Right to Education Act was passed and a lot remains to be done to ensure that
every child is in school and is learning. CACR mandates itself to constantly work with the schools,
children, parents and the education department to understand the programs,
budgets, implementation, loop holes and lacunae and try to find solutions to
make things work. CACR knows that it needs to be consistent and persistent in
its approach. To run a school efficiently, it is imperative to ask all
stakeholders to spell out their problems and ideas.
CACR has nominated
many citizens representatives in the SMC of various schools. They have been
playing an important role to discuss the challenges such as dropping enrolment
in schools, quality of mid-day meal and cleanliness in schools. They have been
playing a constructive role in improving the quality of education by conducting
regular workshops on computer skills and introducing interactive Spoken
English program. Since CACR members have been observing and helping BMC
schools for many years, they are aware about the administrative and technical
bottlenecks. CACR core members have even conducted SMC training programs in
schools for teachers and parents.
CACR is in this for
the long haul and is willing to make changes one step at a time. Many things
are under the scanner and CACR members are bringing them to the notice of the
authorities on a regular basis. Alongside, CACR members are improving the situation
with some short-term inputs like sharing of experiences in formal forums of the
education department,, conducting RTE training, teacher training, enrolment
drives and taking spoken English
classes. This is to impart consistent and good quality teaching of English to
children from the economically disadvantaged strata who are attending free
vernacular medium schools. The spoken English DVDs are scientifically and
attractively made by The Bombay Community
Public Trust and TATA Interactive
systems.
This new initiative
prevents dropouts and reduction in enrolment of new entrants to vernacular
schools, utilizes the existing infrastructure, motivates and simultaneously
improves the English skills of the existing teaching staff.
CACR and IIT Bombay has
partnered to impart Basic IT skills (CLP program) to students using
spoken tutorial program. IIT has developed self-learning, spoken-tutorial CD with multiple
language options that can teach students computer skills such as typing and saving a text document, making an excel sheet and presentation slides, etc. The course is
made for students of class 5th, 6th and 7th standards i.e. students
in the age group of 10 to 13 years. CACR needs more dedicated volunteers, who
can participate in implementing this national-level project as approved by the Ministry
of HRD.
The BMC authorities
have also taken initiative by installing a virtual classroom
to attract more students. The Virtual Classrooms are installed in 360 primary and 120 secondary schools. 800
teachers have been trained by the Education department to operate the VCT
equipment. CACR volunteers, with the help of Central Virtual Classroom Control
Centre at Dasturwadi, Dadar, are helping the school authorities to activate the
Virtual Classroom equipment in schools. Volunteers have
already helped to install and set the VC system in 2 to 3 schools and are still
counting. CACR volunteers have used these VC’s to implement Computer Literacy
and Spoken English programs as well.
Other area where CACR plays the role of a ‘monitor’ is as
follows:
1. The 27 items
that are distributed to each child at the start of each new school year.
2. The mid-day meal,
which is a nutritious sumptuous meal.
3. School
Infrastructure wherein CACR volunteers keep a track of the physical
infrastructure and report any faulty
repairs and need for construction.
CACR is an association of volunteers who are citizens,
activists, ALMs (Area Locality Management), etc. They have one thing in common
– they all want the best for Indian children!
CACR
members have a lot to do! Please join us
and make Quality education a reality for every child studying in Municipal schools
in Mumbai.
And this… is just to
start with!
To volunteer please
write to Dr. Richa Singh – Volunteer Member at richa_singh@ngocacr.com
To donate please write
to Mr. Nitin Wadhwani - Founder Member and Director, CACR at nitin_wadhwani@ngocacr.com "
Written by Ms. Lara
Shankar - Founder member and Advisory Board member, CACR
