Safe Spaces for Childhood
Developing Toolkits and Training Panchayats across 12 States for Child Protection
🧩 Partner: UNICEF India | 🗓 November 2017 | 📍 Pan India in 12 States
Context
“Child friendly Panchayats” are a much-needed initiative that addresses concerns related to child survival, development, protection and participation. Under the “Safe Childhood Programme” these Panchayats are being institutionalised as a combined initiative of the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR), Ministry of Panchayati Raj (MoPR) and select nongovernmental organisations like UNICEF, Save the Children, Plan India, Child Rights and You (CRY) and Action Aid.
The programme was implemented through a national campaign in 12 states, where the respective State Commission for Protection of Child Rights (SCPCRs) and NGO partners were frontline implementers.
UNICEF was assigned the task of providing technical support to NCPCR in developing resource materials and monitoring tools for implementation.
The Challenge
Despite substantial progress being made in promoting safe spaces for children, especially in rural areas, rights of children continue to be violated and compromised. There is not enough awareness or training on building communities that can guarantee safe spaces for children in rural panchayats.Â
The Insight
Children’s safety across geographies and rural and urban settings has to be non-negotiable. Evidence-based learnings are needed to strengthen village-level systems and governance structures to ensure rights of the children are guaranteed. Most importantly, personnel working with children or in close contact with them, need to be sensitised and trained on child-friendly mechanisms.
The Solution
NCCDC partnered with UNICEF to develop a training toolkit for a two-day training of trainers (ToT) in 12 States as part of the national campaign (MP, UP, Chhatisgarh, Bihar, Assam, Andhra Pradesh, Haryana, Karnataka, Odisha, Jharkhand, Tamil Nadu, Uttarakhand).
As of 28 November 2017, a total of 12 training batches were completed.
