Chennai: On the eve of World Children’s day, School Children Council (SCC) an initiative of child rights organization, Arunodhaya, in collaboration with the education department of Chennai corporation, was formally inaugurated at Chennai Middle School in Korukkupet on Monday.
The objective of SCC is to enable children participate effectively in school activities and take steps to make their schools child friendly. The initiative was started in 14 other corporation schools on a trial basis in June 2017.
All SCCs would be formally inaugurated this week. Talking about the way SCC works, Virgil D. Sami, director, Arunodhaya, said, “Six to 10 representatives from each section are selected to form the SCC. All the kids then form four committees including hygiene committee, noon meal committee, education committee and child protection committee.
She further added that the committees discuss cleanliness and hygiene in toilets and classrooms, noon meal, identify school dropouts and safety issues inside the campus.
They will prepare an action plan and create awareness in the school through competitions, street play, exhibition, cultural programme and speeches in common assembly.
Each committee elects its leader and the committee leaders form the core committee. Two members of the core committee will be part of school management committee meetings.
The students in the council had drafted plans in the last five months and worked towards resolving them. Explaining one such achievement, R. Satya, a student said, “Initially, it was impossible to cross the Coronation Nagar junction in Korukkupet to reach the school due to lack of traffic regulation. We gave a petition requesting for traffic police to aid students cross the busy road in school hours and now a cop is posted in the area.”
The teachers claim that due to this programme taken up in government schools, the number of dropouts has decreased by a great margin and children have started voicing out issues of abuse and other problems.
