The Collabor

ators

13

B

al raksHa BHarat (save tHe

cHildren)

HCL Grant Recipient

Education, 2020

HCL Grant Project Title:

P

romoting

Quality Education through a Culture of

Peace and Safe Learning Environments

for the Most Marginalized Children of

Jammu and Kashmir

Save the Children works across 120 countries.

Known as Bal Raksha Bharat in India, it

works in 20 states. It seeks to build a world in

which every child attains the right to survival,

protection, development and participation.

Working in concord with several partners,

including the central government, it has

impacted over 10 million children in India.

In 2014, Save the Children initiated a

successful pilot project, Peace Education

and School Safety in Jammu and Kashmir

(J&K). HCL Grant helped to scale up the

programme, allowing children to learn in

safe/peaceful spaces, and also implement its

peace-education curriculum with Teachers

as Peace Champions, designed with Jamia

Millia Islamia niversity. Having secured the

J&K Education Directorate’s expression of

Azaan,

son of a labourer and a student of class 6 fell into bad company and

left school. Luckily, he met the Save the Children team where he learned about

child protection and rights. He has rejoined school, and is a member of the

NGO’s children’s group. He reaches out to child labourers, dropouts, and

drug abusers, and helped the marginalized get rations during the Covid-19

pandemic. “My message to those children who have been through a bad

childhood and lost hope in themselves is – our dreams can come true only if we

have the courage to pursue them.”

s

upport, Save the Children is now scaling up

the peace project in 60 government-run schools

in Budgam and Leh districts, capacitating

approximately 5,000 direct beneficiaries

including children, teachers, communities

and state administrators to undertake peace-

building initiatives, safety audits, risk mapping

and child safeguarding – in classrooms, schools

and neighbourhoods. e larger ambition is

to mainstream the innovative idea of peace

education and school safety into the state’s

education system. It works to form and

strengthen Children’s Groups (CGs) and

School Management Committees (SMCs).

An enrollment drive with the Education

Department in 2020 ensured that parents from

the community and intervention schools began

sending their children to the government schools.