Children as reporters make a difference
NIMI KURIAN
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In Koraput, Orissa, a UNICEF-aided project trains and encourages child reporters to become agents of change.
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INTERVIEWS GIVE THEM A DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVE: Children take notes.
Far away in Koraput, Orissa, in a remote village called Ankur, children working as reporters are trying to make a change. This is a project implemented by the UNICEF under the Advocacy and Partnerships programme in 2005. This is a participatory, village-based programme and initially 10 students chosen from 10 schools were selected. The children were trained to report on matters within the community that affect them. The training included observation, questioning, relating and drawing inferences so that they could come out with a full report.
According to Santakar Chelapila, co-ordinator of the project and editor of Ankurodgam, this project was begun with the hope of helping children to build their skills in writing, observing and also dreaming. The children were to be agents of change. The people of this district are mostly illiterate and hence have no knowledge of health care, sanitation, the need for education and other societal expectations. As a result the children too feel no responsibility to society. When they see a broken drainpipe, a dysfunctional tube well or unhygienic surroundings it fails to make any impression on them. The children are ignorant about the anganwadi centre, the panchayat office or even the post office.
Growing awareness
But, says Chelapila, ever since the children became reporters there has been a marked change. For one, they are more observant, they ask more questions and are more aware of his/her surroundings. This attitude is carried over into the classroom and there is more participation in the classroom making the lesson more interesting, and finally the child performs better. The child gets into the habit of utilising available resources to the fullest, in this case the teacher.
The children report on matters concerning health, water, sanitation, poverty, and education... anything that strikes them as important. They are required to fill one page of the diary every day. At the end of the month, the diaries are collected and the best reports selected to be printed in the monthly newsletter Ankurodgam. The newsletter is circulated among decision-makers in the state and district level, media and NGOs.
From among these reporters a few have been trained to use audiovisual equipment. In July this year, the reporters launched their weblog www.childreporters.blogspot.com Dasrath Hantal of Std. VII in Kotpad expresses his distress on his post titled Youth! Get Up: I see many young persons in my village. But they do not do any purposeful work in their life. But just are busy gossiping. They comment on the girls who go on the road. When would they learn to do the right work?
According to Lalatendu Acharya, Communications Officer, UNICEF Office for Orissa, this programme has provided a forum for people to listen to children and for children to voice their views. They have also been able to influence policy decisions at local and state levels.
When a truck hit a child in Maliput and broke his leg, the child reporters met the Block Development Officer and reported the incident. Reporting on sanitation and healthcare the children learn the importance of hygiene and so on. They are working to bring drop outs back to school, talking and convincing parents on the importance of education. Begun in one village with 100 reporters from 10 schools, today, there are almost 1500 child reporters from 286 schools in Koraput district.
Observing the success in Koraput, the district of Dhenkanal also has initiated this project. Now there are over 100 reporters in Dhenkanal.
As the project developed, it became necessary to involve members of the community and also schools. Hence the People's Group for Children's Development (PGCD) was formed.
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