Two-day ‘Youth4Children’ camp was held at Sehore near Jamuinya Tank village. Around 50 youth participants from Bhopal had participated in the same. The camp was a part of marking 30 years of signing of the convention on the child rights and how to engage young people especially who are active on social media to spread awareness on child rights.

The camp was organised by UNICEF in partnership with Sky Social, a non-governmental organisation.

Speaking at the inaugural Michael Juma, Chief UNICEF, Madhya Pradesh spoke about importance of engaging with youth and said that increasingly youth4children strategy has become central pillar for advancing child rights in every sphere. He said in thirty years after signing of CRC, we have achieved a lot but we still have challenges like child marriage, violence against children and fighting under-nutrition.

District Collector Sehore Ajay Gupta spoke on efforts being taken by the district and also on the challenge of declining child sex ratio in the district. Pankaj Chaturvedi, Pawan Deolia also spoke at the inaugural.

Anil Gulati Communication Specialist, UNICEF took the participants through childrights using an activity stressing how important is to recognise that all children, all rights, at all times. He spoke on the provision, participation and protection rights of children.

Shristi Pragat, of SkySocial spoke on the challenges of gender, and how important it is to recognise children and their rights in present times. Dr Sameer Pawar, Nutrition Specialist, UNICEF spoke to participants on the importance of first 1000 days in life of the child.

Participants also visited special care new born unit and nutrition rehabilitation unit of Sehore and moved by the experience at these units and work being done by the district.

Participants in the camp did village walk, drew social maps on the ground in village of the various services for children as well the challenges using locally available materials like mud, colours, leaves etc. Participants interacted with various stakeholders of child rights like anganwadi workers, asha, teachers, sarpanch, people in village and most importantly children to find out the issues they are facing. They also had an interactive session wherein they had asked questions about gender, child health, nutrition, school education etc and shared their perspectives.

Participants had made an action plan for upcoming child rights week from November 14-20, 2019 and how they are going to use power of social media and tools like video's stories, blogs, images, and talk about child rights, 30 years of CRC, issues like child marriage, nutrition, health and protection.