PROTECTION AND WELFARE

Protection and welfare is the constitutional rights given to all vulnerable communities including children and we as 5th pillar work to safeguard their rights and facilitate to easy access to get benefits from government welfare schemes. Under the motto, our actions given as:

From 2022-23 onwards, we are successfully running “Ensuring Access to Justice for Children” project supported by Kailash Satyarthi Childrens’ Foundation with the aim to safeguard child rights and zero tolerance of child related incidence. We are committed to make “CHILD MARRIAGE FREE INDIA” and to minimize Child labour / child trafficking across district through intensive campaign, community level pledges, stakeholders’ pledges and linkages with services / welfare schemes to victimized vulnerable families. As of March, 2024, as many as 2,74,488 people have taken pledges in 277 villages of 06 districts. 78 FIRs lodged against traffickers / accused / employers and 93 caught and penalized. 164 children rescued and restored to parents signing Bond that they will not let their work as child labour.

Since inception of the programmein 2011, we collaborated with CHILDLINE India Foundation running “CHILDLINE 1098” in Muzaffarpur and East Champaran districts and “Railway CHILDLINE” at Muzaffarpur railway station. We coordinated with child safety network from panchayat to district and state level Child Protection Units /Allied system to provide services to all distress children (Child in Need and Care) and to mainstream them in developmental net. Since inception in 2011, we have served more than 19,756 distress children in all categories and restored/repatriated them with parents followed by mainstreaming, linkages and welfare benefits/compensation/rehabilitation packages with concern departments. During community mobilization, we knocked almost all doors in activity blocks and aware them against child labour, child trafficking, child marriage and enabled them to not only to discourage these social evils but also play active role to stop them in case incidence happen to take place nearby. Village Child Protection Committee and PRIs together joined hand-in-hand making Human Chain Campaign for prevention of such acts. Hundreds of child marriage had been stopped over almost 13 years of programme implementation.

We successfully implemented“Addressing Child Marriage in Bihar by Empowering Adolescent Girls and Elected Women Representatives (EWRs)” project with the support of The Hunger Project. The project piloted in Marwan block of Muzaffarpur district. 436 Adolescent girls across 14 panchayat joined hand with determination to abolish child marriage in their areas with the handholding support of 215 Elected Women Representatives (EWRs). For this purpose, 10 Sukanya Club formed in which 436 girls engaged and imparted training on Life Skill Enrichment “Mera Jeevan Mera Adhikar”. They facilitated to dialogue face-to-face with government officials who were responsible for prevention of child Marriage. EWRs helped them at every steps in handling child marriage related issues. As many as 19 child marriages were stopped by these Sukanya club girls in one year of the project.