For the first time children’s officially participate in the gram sabha to discuss their issues, entitlements and rights on the occasion of ‘special gram sabha’ organised on 2nd October, 2016 here in Khandapada, the model child friendly constituency of Odisha. In the occasion of ‘Gandhi Jayanti’ the special gram sabha has been organised across the country to promote and ensure people’s participation in the development of their village. Children here in Khandapda didn’t miss the opportunity to keep their demands in front of the people and their representatives.
The members of ‘children and adolescent collectives’ in Benagadia, Ranipada, Jogiapalli, Ranichhelli and Banamalipur, gram panchayats of Khandapada block participated and presented a ‘GP fact sheet’ contains issues related to five child development programmes like anganwadi centre (integrated child development scheme), integrated child protection scheme (ICPS) , education (SSA), health (NHM) and sanitation (SBM-G). They highlighted major issues related to poor infrastructure available in their schools like boundary wall that protect from all kinds of external dangers, non-availability of water in the toilet discourages to usage of the same, an attached kitchen make smoke environment and poor availability of sport equipments, books for library and equipments for the laboratory make their reading miserable.
Most of the anganwadi centres (child care centre under ICDS) don’t have own building, so children lack space to read, play and dine and also there are no space for toilet and kitchen. Along with they raised the insufficient and poor quality of nutritional food given in the AWCs. Most importantly children raised the issues of child marriage prevalent in their areas and also issues of child labour, school dropout and also the gender disparity where child sex ratio is alarming and female foeticide a way to gender inequality.
Open defecation in these gram panchayats are pervasiveness due to only 20-25% coverage of Swachha Bharat Mission-Gramin toilets which is also worrisome and affects the health consequences of families. They also highlighted facilities for children in health care institutions and coverage of regular immunisation to remote locations in the constituency.
In these historic moments children, people of the gram panchayat and their representatives feel happy to get children onboard to work on their rights and ensure their participation in decision making at the grass root. In most of the gram panchayats the elected representatives received the agenda prepared/ by the children and listened to the genuine demands by the children on the issues. On an important move in Jogiapalli and Benagadia Gram Panchayat the ‘gram sabha’ passed resolution to construct school boundary, provide pipe water connection to school, and immediate construction of toilets remain households under SBM-G. In Ranichheli gram panchayat the gram sabha resolved for a regular debate on children’s issues and resolve those one by one.
Youth for Social Development (YSD) has been working to make Khandapada a child friendly constituency since 2015 with the support from UNICEF and district administration Nayagarh under the guidance of Khandapada MLA Sri. Anubhav Pattnaik. More than 4204 children in 40 gram panchayats organised 125 ‘children and adolescent collectives’ to make their identity as a citizen and voices heard in all decision making that affects them. Aasha, a local NGO support for the ground work and Kalinga Kusum Foundation shared role as a dissemination partner to this initiative.