The Hindu : New Delhi News : Children's cricket team leaves for Pakistan

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Apr 19, 2004

New Delhi

New Delhi

Children's cricket team leaves for Pakistan

By Our Staff Reporter

NEW DELHI, APRIL 18. With the stated aim of promoting peace and harmony between India and Pakistan using cricket as a platform and to raise issues of child rights sensitive to both countries, a group of underprivileged children left for Pakistan here this evening. The event called "Cricket for Peace'' has been organised by LeapFrog with the support of ActionAid and the children will play a series of street cricket matches in Pakistan beginning April 20.

"We are very excited to go to Pakistan and are happy that the trip has finally come through inspite of a delay in getting the visas,'' said Mohan of Bachpan Bachao Aandolan, who cut short his visit to Rajasthan to participate in the "Cricket for Peace'' programme. The trip was flagged off from the premises of Gandhi Smriti at 5, Tees January Marg by actress Nandita Das, well-known painter Jatin Das and the vice-chairman of Gandhi Smriti and Darshan Samiti, K. D. Gangrade.

Accompanying the children is Rakesh Kumar of Bachpan Bachao Andolan, who displayed a banner comprising the flags of both nations with the plea for peace across the border. Mr. Babu Mathew, Country Director, ActionAid India was also present during the flag-off ceremony. The trip has been sponsored by ActionAid India and across the border, it is ActionAid Pakistan which is hosting the series.

Six child reporters are accompanying the group of underprivileged children and they will be reporting on the event. Before crossing the border into Pakistan on Tuesday, the children will pay tribute to the martyrs of World War I a Jallianwalla Bagh tomorrow where they will also interaction with the street children of Amritsar at a special function organised by the Gandhi Smriti.

During the flagging-off ceremony on Sunday evening, Pooja Singh of the Gandhi Summer School gave an introduction to the event. Five children - Akshat Jain of Delhi Public School, Mathura Road; Shaukat from Bachpan Bachao Aandolan, Vijay Kumar from BBA and Azam and Hasim from Jamghat shared their experiences about the preparatory workshop that was held earlier this month.

On the occasion, a website, "Cricket4Peace.com'' was also launched. The website contains information about the event and also give details of the schedule in Pakistan where the children will play six cricket matches between April 20 and May 1. There will also be daily updates as also information for the media which will be made available on a regular basis. All the work of updating the website and preparing media releases will be done by the children themselves.

Also, the children will look at sensitive issues like child prisoners in jail in both countries, the problem of child labour and homelessness. While in Pakistan, they will issue a joint statement calling for the release of child prisoners from both Indian and Pakistani jails and also call upon the Governments of both nations to end child labour nd create mechanisms to deal with the crucial issue of lack of identity for street children - a problem which was faced by the organisers in the initial stages when the process of getting passports for the homeless children was considerably delayed.

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