On 26 Dec. 2010 evening the core committee members & facilitators of BAL Panchayat Bhopal departured for a 2 days Exposure visit to BAL Panchayat New Delhi & CASP-Plan Delhi in order to have an expertize on functioning of BAL Panchayat. The main focus was to have an experience sharing from the members of BAL Panchayat regarding their constitution & functioning over these past years. On 27 Dec. 2010 children had a dialogue with facilitators of BAL Panchayat who were once its members & presently developed themselves as facilitators. During the discussion we visualized that its was a remarkable Vision & Achievement of the organization to channelize the positive energy of the Youths who were members of BAL Panchayat & crossed the age bar of 18 Yrs. A group of children who had build up their leadership quality & were committed & felt as, their responsibility to work for the upliftment of their community, formed a group named "Youth for Social Change". Now these youth have constituted a wing named Child Resource & Information Center (CRIC). Now they are working with CASP-Plan as child facilitators coordinating projects on "Child Labour". In this project they primarily focus on mainstreaming out of school children engaged in Child Labour. For this 3 NFE Centers are functioning in slums where these children are provided a child friendly learning environment & Activity Based Learning (ABL) methodology is used as a medium of teaching. All the children who are regular in NFE Centers were enrolled in schools & the center is in a support role where they help these children to complete the daily activities given in school. In the discussion the children shared their experience how does they feel after going to school & recited some poems & stories they have learned in schools for us. It was a tremendous achievement of the organization to mainstream such children who were child labourers with cent percent retention. It was a major learning for us to replicate the same in our project areas at Bhopal. In second half we had visited BAL Panchayt members of Madanpur Khadar area. About 70 children were present in the meeting most of them were vocal & shared their experiences after becoming member of BAL Panchayat. Both the group members had fun & shared their views, queries & experience with each other & were happy getting an opportunity to make new friends & get to know information of a new place who face similar conditions like us.
The children also visited BAL Panchayat Studio where the members of the BAL Panchyat get an opportunity to enhance their skills through Voice Recording, Video Editing, Song Recording etc. that can be part of career in future. Our children also recorded issue based songs & poems & were very happy after the visit & had a good leisure time in the evening. The participants who were part of Exposure Visit were Neelam Malviya, Arpit Thakur, Ravi Hirve, Priya Subramanium, Niharika Pansoriya, Mohan Patidaar, from Bal Panchayat Bhopal & Neelu & Pragati from Jabalpur, BAL Panchayt facilitators include Rahul Suryavanshi, Sonu Solanki, Basant Upadhayay, Swapnil Agrawal & Shiji Chacko.
The children also visited BAL Panchayat Studio where the members of the BAL Panchyat get an opportunity to enhance their skills through Voice Recording, Video Editing, Song Recording etc. that can be part of career in future. Our children also recorded issue based songs & poems & were very happy after the visit & had a good leisure time in the evening. The participants who were part of Exposure Visit were Neelam Malviya, Arpit Thakur, Ravi Hirve, Priya Subramanium, Niharika Pansoriya, Mohan Patidaar, from Bal Panchayat Bhopal & Neelu & Pragati from Jabalpur, BAL Panchayt facilitators include Rahul Suryavanshi, Sonu Solanki, Basant Upadhayay, Swapnil Agrawal & Shiji Chacko.
