CRY Action Center

CRY Action Centers (CAC) or the RTE booths as more popularly known, are spaces created by CRY volunteers in the community to share information and take action on child rights. They also act as a referral center for cases of CR violations that are reported. Through the CAC, the CRY Volunteers have regularly engaged with key officials - the Block Education Officers, the Child Development Project Officers, Councilors, Government School principals and staff, and Aanganwadi teachers. This has also strengthened community participation and increased the volunteers' ownership, coordination, appointment seeking, detailed planning and discussions. In Delhi, the CAC are functional and regular in three Geo PAGs- Bharat Vihar (Dwarka), Dakshinpuri (Saket) and Seemapuri (East Delhi), thus representing work in 3 districts of the city.

                     

Detailed report of CAC is available here.

A Meet on RTE on 31st March 2013

...on occasion of 3rd anniversary of RTE implementation 

An RTE meet was organized by the All India Parents Association (AIPA) and Social Jurist on 31st March 2013, the eve of the RTE anniversary, at the Gandhi Peace Foundation. The main panel consisted of eminent advocates and philanthropists of education industry - O.P. Sharma, I.S. Gambhir and Ashok Argawal. Many remarkable points on government schools and private schools (both low income and high income) were discussed through speeches and interactive sessions.


Through the interactive session, many parents, activists and students of government schools voiced their experiences and concerns. The most common of those concerns included commercialization of education, poor quality of education, exploitation of school fees, abuse of children in school, corporal punishment and discrimination of minority group children.

CRY Delhi volunteers raised the security issue of schools and the issue of discrimination faced by children at school. As a possible solution, a panel member suggested that parents be strict with the school fees and pay only what is required. Citing that parents remain calm about the treatment of their children in school with respect to discrimination, he suggested parents to act as a team as doing so will force the authorities to stop discrimination.


At the end, Advocate Ashok Agarwal summarized five demands which would be put forward to the Education Minister and State Authority in the form of a petition which was signed by all parents present at the meet.

1. School education should be completely free whether government or private.
2. How many ever government schools are present today, that many more government schools need to come up. Moreover, the schools need to maintain a good standard.
3. The upper age limit for free and compulsory education needs to be increased from 14 years to 18 years. The lower age limit should also be decreased from 6 years to 0-2 years.
4. Constitution must be amended to bring back minority schools and minority groups need to be given more importance.
5. National law should include 50% representation from the community and parents in the school management to implement important decisions such as school fee.

The meet lasted for 3 hours with an attendance of over 120 parents, social activists, media and students.

Authors: Shruthi Dhanwanthary, Divyanshu Singh

References To CRY's Reaction To Union Budget 2013-2014

• For complete article please refer to CRY's blog here.
• For article published in Kolkata Today refer here.
• For summary refer Summary Version-1, Summary Version-2

Purpose of Education - Capacity Building Session

On 27th Jan 2013 CRY Delhi Volunteers Group invited Ms. Simi Sara Thomas, Teacher at St. Thomas School, Delhi, for an interactive discussion with volunteers on her views on ways to impart education and purpose of education, published in The Viewspaper and Ule. The session was really great as it changed perception of volunteers about purpose of education and made them rethink about where the current education system is leading to.



Some key take away points from the session were:
1. Purpose of education should be three-fold:
(a) To provide helping hands to students.
(b) To make students unleash their imagination.
(c) To make students learn through mistakes.
2. A famous quotation of Albert Einstein goes as "Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere." Since rote learning has become vital component of current education system, imagination is facing huge ignorance. Overall, education is standardizing children and making them lose imagination.
3. According to Sir Ken Robinson - Creativity is as important in education as literacy because of following reasons:
(a) One can't predict what the future is going to look like. Students starting school in 2006 will use their knowledge and learning till about 2065; by then the world around will be drastically changed. So, it is better to prepare students to face novel situations than to restrict their brain to think only in current scenario.
(b) If education is about empowering individuals then the best way to do this will be enabling them to think of themselves. This in turn is possible only if we encourage students to be creative.
4. Citing Sir Ken Robinson again - If you are not prepared to be wrong, you will not come up with original. With age creativity fades away, so it's best to trigger creativity early in life. This can be done in following ways:
(a) Encouraging students to make mistakes.
(b) Better than last point, help students find a way out of mess they create through their mistakes.
(c) Mistake = Missed Take. In Bollywood, single scene involves numerous missed takes, but that never means that producer and director quit in between. So, a student should also take mistake as a new learning rather than as a lost opportunity.
5. A famous quotation of Pablo Picasso goes as "Every child is an artist, the problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up." Current world scenario is well depicted in another quotation of Sir Ken Robinson, which goes as "We don't grow into creativity we grow out of it or rather we get educated out of it." This scenario is also well evident from current priority of most of educational institutions which is as follows:
Highest Priority --- Maths, Science and Language
Mid Level Priority --- Humanities and Social Sciences
Lowest Priority --- Music and Arts
Beyond Consideration (taken only as pastime) --- Dance
However, creativity honing ability goes down consistently from bottom to up in this list.
6. Learning already discovered facts is important to ensure following things:
(a) One does waste precious and limited time in reinventing wheel.
(b) There is some base knowledge over which creativity can be applied to bring new things into existence; otherwise imaginative thoughts will take a person to various directions leading ultimately to nowhere.

Some informative and impactful videos referred during the session were "Sir_Ken_Robinson__Do_schools_kill_creativity", "RSA Animate - Changing Education Paradigms" and "Sir Ken Robinson - Changing Paradigms".

Awareness Campaign - KAP Study, at Hauz Khas

Over the period of June 2012 to December 2012, CRY Delhi volunteers did an extensive study of Knowledge, Attitude and Practices (KAP) of potential employers of children, specifically dhaba and garage owners, towards child labor in all 9 districts of Delhi. The study revealed that many such employers were unaware of laws against child labor in India. As a follow up action, campaigns are being planned by volunteers in the areas in which the field research was done, to make the respondents aware of the laws. First event in the series was held at Hauz Khas on 20th Jan 2013. During the event, volunteers organized a rally from Hauz Khas metro station to  Aurobindo market, via Hauz Khas market. Throughout the way volunteers held in their hands placards and posters created by them to convey the intended messages to the public around. The messages conveyed were mostly laws against child labor in India and priority of education over employment in a child's life, and were conveyed by means of beautiful drawings, short poetic text and simple text. Moreover, throughout the way volunteers sung, with music of guitar, song Mera Bhi To Adhikar Hai and other songs expressing desire of children to study. On the way a stall was set up at Hauz Khas market where volunteers stopped for some time to sing the songs, display the posters and placards, and interact with shopkeepers of the market. Many shopkeepers and public around reached out to the volunteers and learnt about the messages conveyed by the volunteers in detail. A similar purposeful stop was made at Aurobindo market too and it marked end of the event.

Volunteers' Visit to Sanjay Camp on 23rd Dec 2012

On 23rd Dec 2012, a group of CRY volunteers visited the newly established CRY PAG (Public Action Group) at Sanjay Camp. Objectives of the visit were:

1. To assess quality of education imparted to children by schools in the region.

2. To learn about teaching related problems faced by children studying in schools in the region.

3. To learn about status of distribution of winter uniform in MCD schools in the region.

Children with whom we interacted ranged from small kids coming regularly to the center for playing to grown up children studying in class 3. In total they were 16 in number, out of which 6 study at MCD schools, 5 study at private schools, 1 takes private tuition as substitute for school and 4 are small enough to attend school. To assess knowledge of the students we distributed a sheet, having counting exercises, to them. Most of the children were able to finish the exercises correctly by themselves; few who could not were supported a lot by their friends around. It was great to see spirit of collaborative learning among the children.

The children were quite amicable and eloquent. They mixed up with volunteers easily and, when asked about teaching related problems faced by them in their respective schools, they responded sincerely. Except for 2, all children getting education somewhere (school or tuition) were happy with their teachers. One of the exceptions was a boy who was taking private tuition as substitute for school. He told that his teacher beats him even for trivial issues, such as, looking around at time of study. Another exception was a girl going to private school. She told that during her classes, her class-teacher is busy throughout in talking over mobile, so she gets little to learn from the teacher, rather school. We tried to get opinion of rest 10 students, who were going to study somewhere (school or tuition) and were happy about teaching facility there, about being beaten by their class teachers. They all believed that it is usually their mistake which causes teacher to beat them and that punishment for their mistake will urge them not to repeat the mistake.

Then we moved ahead to our third objective and inquired the children studying in MCD schools about whether they received winter uniform or money in lieu this season. All 6 such students had received winter uniform or money in lieu. In fact, 5 had received uniform and 1 who got money in lieu purchased uniform using the money. It was great to learn about this fact amidst regular news of delay in winter uniform distribution at MCD schools.

Authors: Jayanti Bhatia, Divyanshu

International Volunteers Day (IVD) 2012

On IVD 2012, CRY Delhi Volunteers Group completed more than 4 years of its existence. The strong bond developed over the years between individual volunteers and CRY was easily noticeable from the enthusiasm and happiness with which CRY Volunteers and CRY Staff celebrated IVD 2012 together.

Here is how the event proceeded:

•  It all started with a motivational message to volunteers from Puja Marwaha, Chief Executive, CRY.
• The speech was followed by a wonderful theater performance named "A Day in Life of a CRY Volunteer" by CRY staff. The performance rightly captured the incredible significance that a CRY volunteer holds for his responsibilities at CRY.
• Moving ahead, children from CRY's Dakshinpuri PAG (Public Action Group) who traveled all along to celebrate IVD added fun to the celebration through their innocent and funny theater performances.
• The series of theater performances were followed by recitation of a wonderful self-written poem "Kagaj Pe Bana Hindustan" by a volunteer.
• Then followed the felicitation ceremony in which different partners, such as CRY IIT Roorkee Chapter, CRY MNNIT Chapter, etc, were appreciated for their significant contribution to CRY.
• Felicitation continued with appreciation of individual volunteers for finishing respective number of years with CRY.
• Felicitation was followed by cutting of cake by volunteers.
• Finally the celebration ended with lunch.

Overall, the day full of celebration was enjoyed so much by volunteers as well as staff that everyone counts it as one of the best events at CRY.

Images for IVD 2012

Volunteers' Experiences of IVD 2012:

"It was a very enriching experience to meet all the volunteers. They come from different walks of life but have been working together to achieve a common goal and get associated with this noble cause. U get to learn so much while interacting with them. I feel privileged to have become a member of this ever growing and ever jolly CRY family." ---- Sahil Joseph Singh, a CRY Volunteer