Meljol …Working at making children aware of their rights and responsibilities

Meljol was initiated in 1991 as a field action project of the department of family and child welfare Tata Institute of Social Sciences. Meljol works with BMC school children in helping them develop citizenship skills amongst children by focusing on their rights and responsibilities, and providing them opportunities to contribute positively to their environment.

Since its inception in 1991, Meljol has worked with 1,41,054 children, 3,776 teachers and 936 schools in India.

Apart from working in Mumbai, Meljol has replicated its work in Pune and Thane.

72 BMC schools in Bombay and 178 schools in rest of Maharashtra partnering with them.

Meljol has built a best practices resource base and now can extend to schools in all districts in Maharashtra

BUILDING SYNERGIES :

Many NGOs at the district and state level are implementing various programs, which focus on enriching the existing curriculum in order to fulfill an important goal of developing responsible citizenship amongst children. However there is a need to consolidate all these efforts, develop a module and formulate a plan of action for ensuring uniformity in these efforts. Meljol in collaboration with these NGOs would like to develop a uniform module and plan of action for inclusion of child rights education in schools.

Keeping this in mind, Meljol has conducted an initial workshop with concerned NGOs in the state of Maharashtra. The 19 NGOs, who participated in the workshop, have shown a keen interest in collaborating with Meljol in its efforts to replicate the program in other districts.

Considering this Meljol has evolved a strategy, which will ensure participation of NGOs as well as District Authorities and DIETs in the process of replicating its Aflatoon programme in all the districts of the state of Maharashtra. This collaboration will be at two levels :

• Centrally - the collaboration will be between the state level government authorities, funding agencies, NGO's and Meljol.
• At the district level, the collaboration will be between district level government authorities including DIETs, local NGO's and Meljol.

The co-ordination between State level Government Authorities, RC's, DIETs/CRCs and local NGO's will be facilitated by Meljol.

NEED FELT AT STATE LEVEL

The authorities in the education department, Maharashtra State , feel that the module prepared by Meljol, with a few alterations, should be integrated in the regular curriculum, which would be enriched with a focus on life skills and value based education. The methodology of child's participation in education, which has been experimented with successfully, also needs to be integrated in the teacher's training's.

The experience gained during these 4 years has equipped Meljol to share its learning's and replicate the program in all the districts of Maharashtra.

Outreach

By the end of March-07, the MELJOL Aflatoon programme will reach out to all government schools in the State of Maharashtra and the program will be integrated within the regular curriculum. This will be achieved in a phased manner spread over a period of 3 years.

In the first year

The Meljol Aflatoon Program is ongoing in 5 districts. The program will continue functioning in these districts with a focus on sustaining the existing programme. These districts will be the base from which Meljol will experiment and develop better methods to implement the program.

The program will be initiated with children and teachers, from one block each in 10 selected districts of Maharashtra, covering all the government marathi medium upper primary schools from the selected blocks. This will include children from schools run by State governments, Zilla Parishads, Nagar Parishads or Municipal corporations.

• Participation of the DIETs (District Institute for Educational Training) in the programme in order to ensure continuous ongoing training of teachers for the implementation of the programs developed by Meljol.
• Inauguration of the program via the objectives of the 3-day workshop will be :
• Training of the representatives from identified NGOs and DIETs/RCs
• MELJOL will conduct an intensive seven-day residential training workshop for the representatives from identified NGOs, coordinators and deputy coordinators, in the beginning of the academic year June 04-05.
• Training of Trainers : Conducting workshops for those teachers and Kendra Pramukhs, who are identified as trainers
• Workshop with the core team from the DIETS, NGOs, Teachers
• During the month of October / November a two-day workshop will be organised with the core team.
• Facilitation of the program at district level by the core team
• District Level Melas In each of the districts, melas for children will be organised in the month of February 2005.