Making changes

The Concerned for Working Children (see previous blip) are working with marginalised children and young people in rural Karnataka, around the coastal town of Kundapura. Helping young people to express their needs and campaign for change has brought them up against the weaknesses of local government, and has led them into working with village councils (panchayats), for example, to call for more decentralisation. When children in Alur district, in the foothills of the Western Ghats, demanded a local high school, the panchayat said that they did not have the power, as school provision was a matter for the state government. So they got them the power, and now here they are standing in front of the new high school, which they all attend.

Every panchayat now has a duty to take a report twice a year from the children's panchayat, and report back. Anyone from 6 to 18 can vote for the children's panchayat, and anyone from 12 to 18 can be elected.

I've temporarily (I hope) lost the photo on a dead or dying computer, so this is from a Powerpoint presentation I wrote on the bus back from Kundapur and delivered last week in Newcastle, NSW. Apologies for the poor quality - hope to replace it when I can.