As the 4.5 year’s Building Safe Communities program came to an end, the Community Child Protection Committees and Child Volunteers hosted a dissemination event in the community on December 27th, 2018.
Building Safe Communities is a partner initiative with UNICEF and two partner non-profits to address concerns of safety and protection of children from abuse and exploitation. Through access to services and active participation of children and adolescents, they developed an evolving model of ‘Safe Communities’ for children living in cities.
CCDT facilitated the formation of 4 Community Child Protection Committees (CCPCs), 7 Child Protection Committees (CPCs), comprising community members including children and key stakeholders, and Child Volunteers to create a protective environment for all children in the community. CCPC is functional at a community level (in Shivaji Nagar) whereas the CPC functions at the electoral ward level. The objective of both committees and child volunteers is to enhance child protection, and monitor mechanisms within the community to ensure child-friendly and safe community.
Through role play, experience sharing and mime acts the CCPC members and child volunteer showcased their journey of building safe communities during the project duration.
Representatives of 4 CCPCs shared their plans to join hands and form a common CCPC comprising 34 members to take their work ahead after the closure of the project in Shivaji Nagar. They shared their plans to sustain the safe spaces created by monitoring them on a regular basis. They will also monitor if any new spaces are becoming unsafe and will garner community participation to make them safe. Furthermore they plan to create awareness in the community and hold regular meetings with children and other community members to identify and address any child protection related issues in the community. Towards this end they would liaise with various stakeholders such as Corporator, Child Protection Committee, ICDS, Police, ward offices, health system, Childline etc.
The committee members also plan to widely share the pamphlet which specifies their role and contact details. They also plan to use the newsboard to keep the community updated on news related to children. The committee shared their plan to pursue with the Corporator and MLA to designate a space in the community to run a center for children. The common CCPC committee has decided to meet on a monthly basis to take a stock and plan their activities, where they also plan to open the suggestion box placed in the community and address the issues identified.
Guests at the event Tejaswani Shinde (Child Protection Officer at the MHB Police Station), Surekha Gurkhe (ICDS Supervisor) and Mohan Patel (Representative of Corporator of Shivaji Nagar and CPC member) committed to continue support to the committee for building a safe community for children. They along with Chhaya Rade (COO, CCDT) congratulated the CCPC members and child volunteers for their work, and felicitated them with certificates.
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