July 19-20, 2008, Venue: International Library & Cultural Centre
Participants : 30 short listed child reporters, Ms. Jyoti Bajaj (Managing Trustee, ILCC), Dr. Suranjeen Prasad (In Charge, CINI Jharkhand), Ms. Tanvi Jha (Research and Documentation Associate, CINI Jharkhand), Mr. Vishnu Rajgadia (BCC Expert, CINI Jharkhand), Mr Ravi Prakash (Editor, I-Next), Mr Amit Gupta (Senior Correspondent, The Telegraph), Mr. Vijay Tiru (Nav Bharat Jagriti Kendra), Ms. Vandita (Citizens Foundation), Mr Mohammad Shakeel (Manthan Yuva Santhan) and the ILCC staff.
The creative writing camp : This camp was held under the aegis of The Knowledge Management Satellite Centre (KMSC), a centre meant to provide a knowledge base on all children issues. This upcoming centre in Ranchi City will also provide a platform for children to voice their issues and work towards bringing about a positive change. The Child Reporters Programme under the KMSC aims at positioning the children as advocacy agents for change and the workshop was the first step towards this direction. The oriented and trained child reporters shall undergo continuous mentoring till their creative writing skills are perfectly honed up and their reports present a strong message to the society as well as the policy makers.
The Day 1 began at 8 am with a welcome note by Ms. Jyoti Bajaj. She congratulated the children for being selected to be trained as Child Reporters. They were then briefed about the activities for the day and how they would be benefited being child reporters. Ms. Tanvi Jha then provided an overview of the knowledge management centre to the children. The concept of child reporters and the objective of the workshop were detailed out. Out of the various pressing issues related to children in the context of Ranchi City 3 issues were chosen – environment (resource recovery and waste management), child labour and education.
The media persons talked to children about the ways of writing a well researched and well articulated article. They told them how are where to look for primary information while writing a report on the selected child related issues. The media resource persons then asked the children to write an on the spot report on the issue of their choice. Following this they provided individual feedbacks to all the children on how to brush up their writing skills and create a write up that could be used as an advocacy tool.
Non governmental organizations working in Ranchi Urban Area on these issues were invited to give technical inputs for the workshop. The child reporters were taken on field visits by the NGO personnel so that they could get hands on experience of the field realities.
The sites visited were:-
1. Hindpiri, Mujahidnagar, Nizamnagar (Issue- Child Labour, with Manthan Yuva Sansthan)
2. Near Loreto School (Issue- Environment / waste management with NBJK)
3. Daily market, Karbala Chowk, Islamnagar (Issue- Child education with Citizens Foundation)
The children interacted with the NGO personnel and got to know how they work on the above listed issues in the field. The child labours at Manthan’s Education Centre mingled with the child reporters. At the Citizen Foundation centre, the children got to know how the deprived urban children are mainstreamed to formal schools through bridge course. In the Nav Bharat Jagriti Kendra area door step collection of garbage and then the secondary dumping area in Ward No. 46 was showed to the children. They also interacted with the “Ward Parshad”, Ms. Minakshi Kujur and got to know more about the process of resource recovery in the area.
The day II basically focused on the final report writing by the children. These reports were then reviewed by CINI and the media persons. A follow up of the event was planned to be held on July 27, 2008 at ILCC. Media coverageThe programme received very good.
