Children from the Learning Centres we support in Bihar State, India joined with hundreds of their local friends this week, to demonstrate in Patna about the need for greater protection.

Recent cases in the media, highlighting incidents of child rape and murder, prompted the children to come out in force and call for a safer environment. They also chose to highlight issues like dowry, the halting of higher education for girls and the need for greater gender equality.

The children lined the roadsides, carrying placards and singing motivational songs. In a striking expression of their solidarity, 500 children from eight different schools, held hands in a kilometre long human chain, appealing to adults to pay more attention to safeguarding children and their rights.

Sr Veena who leads the work in the urban slums of Patna said, “We need to sensitise and educate adults to create a child-safe environment. The purpose of the human chain was to call upon all our neighbours in the wider community to be alert to issues of child protection and children’s rights”.

Veena and her team have ongoing gender equality programmes as part of their work with Dalit children in the slums of Patna. They have seen significant change in the attitudes towards girls, and made many steps towards their protection and encouragement. ​

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We support nine Learning Centres in the slum areas of Cox’s Bazar, ensuring that working children who cannot attend mainstream school can access flexible education and have a chance to rest and play with their friends.

Last December, the Lebanese military entered one of the refugee camps where we were supporting work with Syrian refugee children. They ordered an evacuation, giving camp dwellers a week to take down their tents and leave. They did this in many camps along the sightline of the Lebanese Syrian border-point because of a potential terrorist presence. This meant there was no alternative camp for refugees to move to in the area, so we supported our partners to find new land and build their own camp for refugees.

During this eviction period, as families were trying to come up with plans for where to move, our local partners took all the children that were being evicted on a field trip. They thought it would do them good to be distracted, especially as they sensed many of them were feeling anxious about the military returning. When the military showed up the first time they intentionally intimidated the Syrians: they came in their full attire, brought their tanks and weapons, and threatened to run over the tents with their  tanks if the Syrians weren’t gone in a week.

Our partners gathered the children and took them to land owned by a local convent, which has some beautiful grounds. Here they could run around, wade in the lake, and enjoy the fall leaves and vineyards. The trip was incredibly successful and the children were talking about it for weeks after, showing their parents photos, with their minds distracted from their current situation.

They also used the trip to start conversations about how, together, they could shape their future home so that it has some of the beautiful elements of the gardens they visited. It was a great opportunity to talk to them about the power they have to care for their environment, cultivate it, and enjoy it. They also to discussed how their choices ​make a difference,  how even small, simple things can have big impact. This could be avoiding littering, or starting a small garden next to their tents.

When the new camp began to be built, teachers and students were encouraged to be a part of the moving process: brainstorming ideas and dreams for the future plot of land, involving the adults and older children in the building. One teacher described how “I really like that we teach the children to make conclusions instead of pointing everything out to them.” The conclusions the children reached about the new camp, was that they would love some gardens, they wanted a clean, safe area and most of all, a playground!

A year later and all this is a reality. The new camp is the only settlement in the area with tents spaced strategically to allow access for services. Other camps tend to end up as a maze like sprawl of tents , there is electricity for light and safety and all the residents are part of a cooperative where they influence the running of the day to day life.

Nuna Matar, who heads up the work in the camp says of the new playground “The children are using it to the full! For the children, having their own  space where adults have no business being in has proven to be very beneficial”. Alongside the provision of education in the camp, creating a child friendly environment with colour and play as a central part of life is crucial for children who have experienced trauma to gain a sense of security and normalcy.

​You can support this work over Christmas by giving to our Season of Hope Appeal or perhaps in the new year take on a fundraising challenge! ​

In early September unprecedented water levels created destruction across Bihar State, India, with 213 people killed, 2190 villages underwater and thousands of people displaced to relief camps.

In this area we support a number of education projects for Dalit children and at the time we launched an appeal to help our local partners (Navjeevan Educational & Social Welfare Society) who were heavily involved in the relief effort.

​Thanks to the generosity of our donors we were able to contribute to the work of Navjeevan who focussed on providing for immediate basic needs (i.e food and clothes) and worked to link affected families with government and non-government organisations for further help and support.

Not only this, but because our partners work in education, they engaged local school children in helping with the packing of relief materials ready for distribution and spent some time sensitising local young people about the suffering of the flood victims, motivating them to help. This had incredible results.

​Sister Veena who leads Navjeevan said “Motivating the youth of the locality and inspiring them to actively participate in the relief work reduced the corruption at different levels, because they demanded that the government provided for those affected by the flood, and it reached people”.

The young people worked together to mobilise the politicians to contribute. They secured funds for food, and feed for animals owned by the families affected. To protect livelihoods, every family with animals was given one sack of food and medicine for the animals. The youth group also got permission to use government land to make temporary sheds for livestock.

After one protest at a government office they ensured 6000 rupees for each family affected in one block, then they went to a relief camp in the same area and asked the government to provide police protection for the people there. They also requested a free boat service for flood victims who were being exploited by those who owned private boats and were charging high fares for their use. As a result, there was both a government and a military boat service provided.

Sister Veena says “Children and youth, if motivated will act promptly and generously. Everyone has something to give. We encouraged children at one of our Centres to give what they could for the flood victims.… Almost all the children contributed biscuits, rice, potato, dal, etc. One child who is very poor and only has three shirts, brought his best shirt to give to the children affected by the flood. It was very moving and challenging”.

​Children on the Edge is a child rights based organisation and we work to encourage child participation in all our work. This is a great example of what children can achieve when they are given the resources and the opportunity to make a difference. 

Find out more about the education projects for Dalit children we support in Bihar State, India and consider a donation to the flood appeal. Although the waters have receded there is still much rebuilding to be done. ​

At Children on the Edge we consider the children we help as stakeholders in their own future with their own rights and not passive recipients of aid, services and provision. A significant part of realising this, is to ensure their meaningful participation in our projects.

This process goes beyond tick box surveys and formulaic child stories. It can range from encouraging children to evaluate the positives and negatives of our work and its impact on them and the wider community, through to gaining their perspectives on their teachers and on all decisions effecting them. It also focusses on ensuring that the most vulnerable children are heard, as well as those who are able, confident and competent at expressing themselves.

This time last year we visited our project in Bangladesh where we did some participatory interviewing and activities with the children. We were glad to see a regular newsletter, with a readership of 1,500 being produced by the children, enabling ownership of the project and enabling them to communicate about their progress and achievements.

At this stage they were just beginning to form child councils, a forum for children to express their opinions about the project and represent those of their friends. A year on and our project partners have been working hard to further establish these groups. Meeting fortnightly, each child council member represents a group of students who they develop relationship with so they can reflect their views clearly. They work to bring out issues that some children might like to express, but are too afraid or shy to talk about.

Many problems and views have already been brought to light, last year the children expressed how they would like benches in the schools and education up to Grade 5. Benches are being bought, and we are working hard to find funding to increase the grade years. In more recent meetings, it emerged that a student from Amotolirchora school was made to go to a beach area to earn money, but if he failed to come home with enough he was beaten by his parents.  Another child had admitted that he was scared to study, as he struggles to understand anything in the class room.

If it weren’t for the children being encouraged to have a voice, these issues would not emerge. The child councils are gradually communicating to all 600 children on the project that their opinions and feelings are valued, and will be acted upon, that they are not just beneficiaries, but are owning and designing the project.

There is still a way to go with this process. Even the children on the council can be shy about communicating their ideas, and the staff are starting to encourage them by using stories, dramas and play. They have also spent time educating the groups on child rights.

Within the schools themselves, teachers work hard to ensure that the most vulnerable children are heard. One teacher describes how “We praise the shy students about everything they do. We give them the chance to participate more times than the other children. In a dance we let them be the ones to do the dance. Each shy child we help to make friends with a more talkative child. The more talkative child encourages the shy child”.

Rachel Bentley is visiting the project this week, so watch this space, as well as Facebook and Twitter for a further update on the project.

Find out more about the project in Bangladesh
Child participation is part of our wider rights approach, read about how this shapes our work
Donate to the project ​