Children projects

SIVA TRUST HAS A MAJOR FOCUS ON ADDRESSING THE VARIED CHILDREN ISSUES, ENSURING CHILD PROTECTION AND UPHOLDING THE VALUES OF CHILD RIGHTS.

Awareness Programme on Child Labour Eradication

To create awareness among the community, SIVA Trust also conducts various campaigns and outreach programs.

In recent past, we conducted one campaign on the subject of ‘Prevention and Eradication of Child Labour System’ in all the 10 target villages in Melaneelithanallur Block of Tenkasi district & 5 villages in Manur block of Tirunelveli district.

All the 11 staff of SIVA Trust including 4 Community Organisers, 3 Health workers and 4 NFE teachers divided into 3 groups toured 5 villages each.

  • We met the families which have drop out children
  • We convinced them to send the children either to regular schools nearby or
  • We suggested them they could send their children to the educational/ vocational institutions run by SIVA Trust.

Hand bills specially prepared for the occasion were distributed to these families as well as others in these villages stressing on the abolition of child labour. Various services extended by SIVA Trust in those villages with the financial assistance were also explained to around 5,000 families living in those villages, during the campaign.

As a result of this intensive exercise, the parents have given assurance to send 81 children (36 boys and 45 girls) to our NFE centres, 45 (9 boys and 36 girls) to our computer centres, 32 girls to tailoring centres, 19 students (8 boys and 11 girls) to our supplementary education centres and 27 (13 boys and 14 girls) to our ELC centres. The staff will pursue those parents and admit those children in our institutions.

Mobilizing Grama Sabhas for Child Protection

As part of our mission toward protecting child rights, SIVA Trust mobilizes the community to attend the Gram Sabha meeting in the project village panchayats.

Our project staffs helped the village people, Self Help Group members, Village development council members to draft a common petition requesting the panchayat authorities to adopt resolution unanimously proclaiming that:

  • There will not be any child labour in the panchayat,
  • All the children up to 18 years will be in school,
  • There will not be any school dropout,
  • There will not be any early/ child marriage, and
  • No child in the village will face any kind of exploitation.

The panchayat presidents, ward members, government employees, NGO representatives, teachers from SSA and schools, panchayat staff and community people, both male and female participated in these meetings. The VPC/SHG members of SIVA Trust were briefed about the program in the awareness meeting on child rights held for them at Thirumalapuram on 14th August, common petitions were prepared (copy enclosed) and they were requested to get maximum number of signatures in the petition and submit in the Gram Sabha meeting and insist on adopting that resolution. The Trust staffs were earmarked for each panchayat to assist the villagers in this process.

Accordingly, they attended the Gram Sabha meetings and submitted the petitions and they were accepted and incorporated in the meeting resolutions by the Panchayat leaders. In places where they were held, the meetings lasted for a short time only. Even then our members discussed their local demands and also got the common resolution passed.

Enrollment Campaign: ‘Every Child in School’

SIVA Trust conducted enrollment campaign programme in the working villages with the participation of the community stakeholders and local schools.

The aim of the enrollment campaign is to ensure that each and every child is in school, as per the concept behind the RTE Act, to eliminate child labour, protect the children from child abuse and exploitation from various situations, to stop the evil of early / child marriage and to provide compulsory and quality elementary education to all the children without any gender discrimination.

During the campaign the local community groups, Self Help group members, youth club members, School teachers and regular school students participated and supported in enrolling all the children in to schools. In this campaign, a total of 1662 students,134 SHG members / youth / VPC members, 39 school teachers and 360 community representatives participated.

Staff of SIVA Trust and Children took out rallies chanting the slogan “every child should be in school”. The enrollment campaign mainly focused on the parents of the dropouts and the general community (both male and female) to promote the cause of education.

Meetings and rallies were also held in the villages with the support of the SHG members and schools, when school parent – teachers association members, community and teachers assured their support to the cause of enrolment and the regular attendance of children in schools, prevention of child in to workforce, child abuse and early child marriage.

Sweets were distributed to the children and participants at the awareness rallies and meetings. The campaign was received with tremendous enthusiasm and interest from the local villagers

Publications on Child Rights

To spread the awareness about the Child Rights among its target communities and general audience, SIVA trust created various publications (in English and Tamil). You can download the documents by clicking the links below.

SIVA Trust also conducts various training programs for their staff, school teachers, government functionaries, besides the children, on the importance of child rights and child protection. Here are the two documents that we prepared for the same.

  • Counselling: On various counselling techniques that could be used to support any adult/ child in distress. This was used by us to train the staff and field functionaries of other NGOs and GOs.
  • Good Touch Bad Touch – (English): We created a simple, easy-to-understand training material for children on ‘Good Touch and Bad Touch’ in context of child sexual abuse and harrassment. This is being used by us to train the staff, school teachers, community teachers and also the students. 

Read about the impact of our projects here.