For the first time children officially participated in a gram sabha to discuss their issues, entitlements and rights on the occasion of ‘special gram sabha’ organised on October 2 in Khandapada, a model child friendly constituency of Odisha.
On the occasion of ‘Gandhi Jayanti’ the special gram sabha was organised across the country to promote and ensure people’s participation in the development of their village.
The 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’ containing 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 protects from all kinds of external dangers, non-availability of water in the toilet, an attached kitchen, and poor availability of sport equipment, books for library and equipment for the laboratory.
Most of the anganwadi centres don’t have own building; so children lack space to read, play and dine and also there is no space for toilet and kitchen.
Along with this, they raised the insufficient and poor quality of nutritional food given in the AWCs. Most importantly, the 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 is rampant.
Open defecation in these gram panchayats is pervasive due to only 20-25 per cent coverage of Swachha Bharat Mission. They also highlighted facilities for children in healthcare 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 roots. 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.
In Jogiapalli and Benagadia panchayats, the ‘gram sabha’ passed resolution to construct school boundary, provide pipe water connection to schools and immediate construction of toilets. In Ranichheli gram panchayat, the gram sabha resolved for a regular debate on children’s issues.
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 of Nayagarh under the guidance of Khandapada MlA Anubhav Pattnaik.