All the action in Fabulous February: CACR newsletter Feb'14
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The CACR newsletter for February 2014 highlights several activities including the Balak Mela, teacher training for the Computer Literacy Project, and celebrating Sikhsan Divas in BMC schools. It discusses budget allocations for primary education, volunteer experiences, and partnerships for disability inclusivity in education. The newsletter also promotes recent website updates, a new LinkedIn page, and acknowledges contributions from members and partners.
All the action in Fabulous February: CACR newsletter Feb'14
- 1. CACR NEWSLETTER FEB 2014 CITIZENS ASSOCIATION FOR CHILD RIGHTS school in February is the Month with the least number of days BUT most work! Agreed? Bandra, it was Well, this seemed to be true for the event and found that meeting intense month at CACR. On Feb 1st CACR school did not members were invited to the Balak mela (student fair) have such organized by MCGM where BMC students displayed their signage athletic talent .The event had Mun.Comm., AMC ,DMC, displayed Education Committee chairman as chief guests. More despite the Details here. circular from BMC. On Feb 3rd and 6th The Deputy Edu.Officer conducted the combined monthly meeting with all school DNA also Headmasters-Hm’s and Administrative Officers-Ao’s. reported on CACR group members attended the meeting in K/E and this issue on H/W wards and spoke about the progress of CLP- Feb 11. See computer literacy project. To make the project the article th sustainable we offered to train the teachers of 6 & 7 ALL THE ACTION of the MONTH th standards with Basic IT skills free of cost, a proposal welcomed by the department. Moving forward with implementation of CLP project students from VESITVivekanand Engg. College, Chembur volunteered to begin the project in MCGM schools of Chembur and attended the one day orientation program by Mr.Swapnil from IITB. Ruia students also got oriented with the spoken tutorial program structure on Feb 6th. CACR launched its own company page on LinkedIn. HERE. DMC met CACR and ADAPT members to decide on the training program for MCGM school teachers and You can Follow our page & stay connected. The BMC HM’s about education department celebrated Sikhsan Divas on Feb inclusive 10th on the same day our FIRST Newsletter was education. launched. Missed it? CLICK HERE. In the first newsletter of Jan’14 CACR reported that More on this in the article BMC education department has made it mandatory for by our Educational NGO’S occupying spaces in MCMG School to Partner display signages to that effect. BUT when CACR visited a ADAPT below. Feb 1:Balak Mela Feb 3 and Feb 6: All HMAO- Dy.E.O meet in K/E & H/W wards Respectively Feb 6: MCGM announces EDUCATION BUDGET for Primary education Feb 6: Meeting with BCT to review spoken English project Feb 6: IIT training completed at Ruia Feb 8:VESIT students join CLP project with IITB Feb 8: CACR company page on LinkedIn Feb 10: Launch Of First CACR Newsletter Feb 10: Sikhsan Divas in BMC schools Feb 11:DMC meeting with ADAPT &CACR Feb 11: CACR ImpactDNA reports on No Signages in MCGM schools Feb 16: MUSTRun Bandra event 400 Municipal school kids run Feb 20: CACR Invited to Discuss: “CSR in Education-Ensuring Impact” by Samhita Feb 22: List of special school children given to education department Feb 26th :Flyer’s distributed in BandraKhar area for CLP project. Feb 28th : CACR Website gets NEW sections
- 2. Despite all odds and difficulties the H-WEST Federation, Road Khar right up to Pali Hill on Feb 26th and we have CACR partners, conduct their Must Run Bandra event. already received a couple of calls from residents The event had around 400 BMC school children and differently –abled participants for a 2 km Run along interested in volunteering. Let’s hope these calls translate into volunteers. with senior citizens. The BMC School kids from Petit school and Gazar Bandh School participated and found the event very entertaining. See the event photos here & Read about it HERE. CACR members were invited to attend the discussion on ‘CSR in Education-Ensuring Impact’ by Samhita, an Infosys initiative. Mr. Mirchandani attended on behalf of CACR and reported that some of the speakers had enriching experiences to share and it was a great pool to brain storm on ideas and solutions. Previously, CACR members had met DMC Mr.Dhamne and Mrs.Gargi in connection with relocation of special children from S.G.Barve Municipal School, Kurla Lastly, CACR website became more informative and useful for people looking for information on RTE, GR’S, Circulars, and SMC etc. to a neighborhood municipal school. As per RTE act the children should attend nearest Municipal school and all schools should be disabled friendly. CACR along with members from RC Ruia are trying to relocate special kids to the nearest school convenient for students. The First list of students was given to department on Feb 22. The BIGGEST event for the MCGM Education We have added a whole NEW Section that contains documents with information on the above and much more! Check it out HERE. Scroll down to see the footer area on our home page. We also added something for our partners….More in our ‘What’s NEW’ section of this newsletter. Department happened on Feb 6th—if you guessed it was Well, I sincerely hope you find this edition of the the BUDGET-- you are 100% on the mark. So what’s the newsletter much more engaging, candid, and new figure? More money despite poor unitization? Any informative. We hope to improve more next time. more guesses??? It is a whopping 2660.44 CRORES! For Do write to us about your views and feedback. PRIMARY education in MCGM schools. Yes, almost equivalent to the GDP of a few European nations put together. So continuing with an upward trend year after Scroll down for stories from our volunteers, partners and about the Budget. year with the budget & also continuing the downward Thank you for reading. trend with student enrollment. Will this year be any Dr.Richa Singh different? Only time will tell. But I won’t keep you waiting …The Budget break down is HERE. 1000 CACR handbills on the Computer Literacy Program have been distributed by newspaper vendors from 16th
- 3. YOU MUST KNOW Rupees 2660.44 Crores sounds like a lot of money, isn't it? (4291112000 USD) That is the budget for the primary education in MCGM public corporation schools, where the number of students is decreasing and budget seems to pile up each passing year. MCGM imparts free primary education in eight different mediums in 1150 primary school to 3, 78,627 students which includes 863 students from 17 special schools for mentally challenged students. MCGM also runs 145 Secondary Schools wherein 54,117 students are imparted free education. There are 453 MCGM owned School Buildings and 62 rented School Buildings. As on date there are 11,988 teachers for Primary Schools and 1407 teachers for Secondary Schools. The Budget Estimate for 2013-14 which was Rs.2472.53 crores has now been revised to Rs.1894.61 crores, which means….READ MORE
- 4. VOLUNTEER VOICES My first experience BY JZ A good non-profit is always in search of sincere and dedicated volunteers. Just like any organization is. You put out the volunteer request through email, social media, handbills, friends, and relatives and then wait for people to join you for your projects. People volunteer for various reasons: To give back to society, do good, earn some good karma, certificates, resume’ building, make some money on the side and some come out to spend their weekends volunteering for the happiness and joy it brings to be part of a positive change. Today our Volunteer JZ shares the volunteering experience with us. It is pretty interesting, where it all began and how it transitioned. Without further ado. Here is the article “Everyone has thought of a fixed path in life—A good career in a fortune 500 company, money, and an early retirement to start something new. Volunteering comes into picture only after retirement for most of us. There is no time for anything else in our busy life. As it is our Social life, traveling, family, Job, keep us occupied so volunteering is not even part of the equation. Leisure time is spent meeting with friends, eating and drinking, and shopping. Social responsibility is left to the corporate companies with big pockets and resources, rights? This belief changed when I was struggling to get a job. As the famous saying goes “An empty mind is a devil’s workshop”, I decided to volunteer for namesake, when an old friend told me about some computer literacy project with IITB. I had decided in the beginning that if it became too difficult I would give some excuse and leave. Difficult situations can be handled only in jobs where there is incentive of promotion, money, and recognition which clearly is not the case with volunteering. So charged with that notion in mind I went READ MORE ~ The author of the article has earned her Engineering degree and MBA from Mumbai University and still continues to volunteer on weekends along with her current job.
- 5. PARTNERS SPEAK "The only disability in life is a bad attitude"- said author, Scoot Hamilton. CACR and ADAPT together want to sensitize people about disability and make the city more disabled friendly .CACR has partnered with ADAPT (Abled Disabled All People Together).ADAPT was formerly known as 'The Spastic Society Of India'. CACR was instrumental to help ADAPT to plan and initiate the 'sensitization program' for the Municipal school Principals of Mumbai, India. The CEO and Trustee of ADAPT has written about their future and current initiatives with CACR. OVER TO VARSHA Education and Accessibility The Right to Education Act (RTE) makes it mandatory for schools to take in children with disabilities. As a result, the government programmes of Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS) and Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) are now including children with special needs. There are however challenges, the main one being access. Access does not pertain only to architectural barriers that prevent persons from disability from participating in mainstream life. It also refers to access to education, to the curriculum, to employment. The Persons with Disability Act mandates that the State create a barrier free environment for person with disabilities and make special provision of the integration of persons with disabilities into the social mainstream. 1. 2. 3. 4. These include: ramps in public buildings; adaptation of toilets for wheel chair users; braille symbols and auditory signals in elevators or lifts; Ramps in hospitals, primary health centers and other medical care and rehabilitation institutions. On the other hand, regular teachers and other professionals are not trained in inclusive education. Since the ‘How’ of inclusion has still not been worked out, teachers find it difficult to deal with differences in the classroom. The Training and Pedagogy department of ADAPT, set up by Founder Chairperson, Dr. Mithu Alur in 1978 as there were no trained professionals to teach children with multiple disabilities, has been conducting training programme in the field of education, disability, inclusion in education and the community for various stake holders and has trained over two thousand teachers, Principals, Master Trainers, therapists and parents. We have trained regular teachers from schools under the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan in inclusive education. Programmes have also been held for the Municipal Corporations of Greater Mumbai, Navi Mumbai, Thane, Kalyan, Dombivali and Meera Bhayender.
- 6. We are therefore very happy to partner the H West Federation and the Citizens Association for Child Rights-CACR to spread awareness about inclusive education and make the H-West Ward a ‘disabled-friendly ward’. Future Plans A half day sensitization programme for the Principals of 1150 schools run by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation is planned in April 2014. This we hope is the first step to including children with disabilities into their schools so that the Right to Education can be implemented and no child is left out of school. Simultaneously, we hope to initiate the campaign for equal access undertaken by The ADAPT Rights Group (ARG), set up by Malini Chib, Trustee, Acting CEO, disabled advocate and author, ‘One little Finger’ entitled ‘Mumbai Rising for Disability Access: We the People Too’ A group of young persons with READ MORE. WHAT’S NEW WHAT'S so NEW? 1. WEBSITE UPDATES: www.ngocacr.com got 2 NEW sections-ONE for the monthly newsletter HERE & Other for IMPORTANT GOVT CIRCULARS, ACTS, REPORTS, RTI’S LIST OF SCHOOLS & DISPENSARIES on HOME Page
- 7. 2. OUR Partners get DIRECTLY LINKS embedded in their LOGO Names on our website. So the Visitors visiting CACR website can have direct access to our Partner’s websites/Face book pages/other Social Media on Click of a button! 3. IITB has made a new introductory video on Basics of computer parts & uses for CLP project. It is available on YOU TUBE HERE 4. CACR Members were invited to Project "READ INDIA" by Rotary Club of Lokhandwala. On 8th February, Rotary Club of Lokhandwala Kandivali set up a library by donating two book cases and 253 story books to Transit Camp BMC Hindi Shala, Lokhandwala Township, Kandivali (E). ______________________________________________________________________________________ ANNOUNCEMENTS: Computer literacy project –CLP with IITB completed in Chakala mun. School building in 4 schools. CLP Handbills to call for volunteers created and rolled out and Distributed via Facebook, LinkedIn and Newspaper vendors CACR Deeply Thanks Artist ANAGHA NIGWEKAR for creating this Handbill EMAIL SENT TO AMC About the neglected conditions & lack of accountability in BALWADI’S CACR is on Twitter @cacr6 Follow us HERE #World NGOday celebrated across the GLOBE on Feb 27th
- 8. STAY TUNED FOR MORE NEXT MONTH….. IN THE PIPELINE Enrollment drive handbills under creation for MASS enrolment drive for MCGM schools Social plays to spread awareness on municipal education planned Content for virtual classroom –exploring options! Got SOME ideas? write to us here Academic year ends in March third week -finish your projects in time! SMC’s to be reelected contact your HM to nominate your name CACR participates in DNA ican women’s run with 70+ BMC school girls _____________________________________________________________ THAT’S IT FOR NOW Thank you all for contributing to the Newsletter—Nitin, JZ, and Varsha. I hope our readers find this edition even better than the last one. NOTE: All letters in BLUE are hyperlinks which will help you to view the content/photos in detail when you CLICK on them **If you think our newsletter shouldn’t be in your inbox. Please CLICK HERE to unsubscribe. ** Have a Fabulous Weekend and Women’s day Best wishes, Richa Singh richa_singh@ngocacr.com On behalf of team CACR Citizens Association for Child Rights www.ngocacr.com or www.cacr.in Come Connect with Us! Face book: https://www.facebook.com/CitizensAssociationForChildRights Twitter: @cacr6 LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/company/citizens-association-for-child-rights/