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Creating anti-child labour awareness through street theatre

TAKING THE MESSAGE: Members of the Human Rights Forum for Dalit Liberation - TN performing a skit at the Annai Velankanni Matric Higher Secondary School in Puducherry on Monday.

PUDUCHERRY: Indifferent treatment by some non-Dalit teachers forced a couple of 14-year-olds to flee school and take up jobs. Having quit school, their parents married them off and barely out of their teens, now the boys have become parents.

“These are true incidents that happened in Virudhunagar district of Tamil Nadu a few years ago,” explained M. Sakthivel, training coordinator of the Human Rights Forum for Dalit Liberation – Tamil Nadu (HRFDL-TN) to a group of teachers.

He was addressing the teachers as part of a cultural awareness programme organised by the HRFDL-TN, which is a State-level federation of 14 Dalit networks with 211 NGOs in Tamil Nadu. “Teachers must not indulge in differentiating children on the basis of caste, religion or social strata,” he said.

A group of 17 members performed a skit about child labour and the relevant laws against the practice.

The actors mixed humour with punch dialogues. The artists also recited songs on various topics including female foeticide and empowerment of women.

According to P. Ravichandran, convenor, and John Paulose, project coordinator, this is the second phase of the cultural tour that started on October 15.

The organisation would target schools, colleges, bus stands and thickly populated places. In the first phase they had covered Erode, Nilgiris and Coimbatore.

They would be performing in other districts including Kancheepuram, Vellore, Tiruvannamalai and Chennai in Tamil Nadu. “The tour is being conducted in collaboration with ADER, a French NGO and with support from the European Union,” they said.

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