CRY Volunteers North

Micromax has launched a twitter campaign for Christmas, wherein for each tweet on #CANGiftHappiness it would donate Re. 1/- to CRY. Within few hours of its launch, the campaign became one of the top topics on twitter in India. Requesting all readers to tweet on this # and help CRY in its social endeavour (get friends and family also to tweet!). All that you have to do is to log into your twitter account and post tweets with this tag. The message could be just about anything – something that makes you happy, something which you want to do to make others happy, something to do with child rights – anything and everything works! You can do a search on twitter with #CANGiftHappiness to see the kind of stuff people are posting – just in case you need any idea starters. The more tweets we get in the next 6 days on this – the more funding we get! So please do start tweeting. The added incentive - you can win a Micromax phone as well, autographed by Hugh Jackman.

This event, is about bringing music lovers in Delhi together for a two day event when they can enjoy the music that they love and at the same time can do something to ensure lasting change for underprivileged children in India. This event will bring together rock groups from across the country and part proceeds from the sale of tickets will be given to CRY. This event will also see band members from multiple bands come together to create an “anthem for children”. Children from Music Basti will be sharing the stage along with these musicians to perform this anthem as a grand finale to this two day show. Date: 7th & 8th December, 2013 Venue: Zorba (next to the Sultanpur Metro Station) Time: 12 noon – 8 pm on both days.

Dear Volunteer, The power of a vote - your vote can change the lives of millions for the better. Soon, our country will go to the polls. Shockingly, a whopping one-third of India’s citizens will not have a say in determining who forms our next government. Their basic rights are violated every single day. They have no economic power, no vote and therefore no voice. They are  India’s children , and they need us - we who have both a voice and a vote - to speak up for them. Today, 66 years after independence, the situation of the Indian child is a grim one: ·           Every second child in India is malnourished ·           11.8% of children in India are engaged in some form of child labour ·           National Dropout Rate at the Elementary Level is over 40% ·           Nearly 45% of girls get married before the age of eighteen years. This election, CRY - Child Rights and You, as an independent non-government organisation working in the area of child rights for over 33 ye

On 27 th October 2013, CRY volunteers organised a Diya Painting Event at a government school in Sector-63, Noida. The event involved students of class 4 and class 5 and was focused on honing the creativity in children while having fun in painting Diyas. Divyanshu, a CRY volunteer who participated in the event, quoted “I had never thought before that Diya Painting can be so engaging, fun filled and fulfilling teamwork”. Children as well as volunteers enjoyed the event a lot and embarked the festive celebration of Diwali. For more pictures of this event click here .

19th October 2013, CRY Noida volunteers organized a whole day event in a government school in Sector-12, Noida. The event was sponsored completely by Oracle Volunteers, the CSR wing of Oracle Corporation. Approximately 600 students distributed across class 1 to class 8 were catered to by 28 volunteers. Some of the major activities during the event were: Class 7 and class 8 students were gifted Anglo-Hindi dictionary and taught how to find meanings and use phonetics. Class 5 and class 6 students were gifted Hindi to English translation book and taught some basic lessons of the translation. Class 3 and class 4 students were gifted Activity Book containing lots of puzzles and were taught how to apply logic and reasoning to solve those puzzles. Class 1 and class 2 students were gifted Drawing Book and crayons to make them learn about colors and objects, while having fun of coloring. Class 7 and class 8 students were taught some tricks of Vedic Math

CRY Volunteers trained 150 children of a MCD school in Ali Gaon, Delhi, on Public Speaking for over 2 months. Eventually, 40 students were shortlisted to express their point of views on Child Rights during Video Shoot Round of the Speaker of the Year Competition (organized annually by Maverick Ventures) at the school. More images of the workshop can be seen here . Authors: Riyana Lama and Divyanshu Singh

CRY Volunteers trained 300 children of a government school in Noida on Public Speaking for over 2 months, starting 17th Aug 2013 till 28th Sept 2013. Eventually, 54 students were shortlisted to express their point of views on Child Rights during Video Shoot Round of the Speaker of the Year Competition (organized annually by Maverick Ventures) at the school. More images of the workshop can be seen here . Authors: Riyana Lama and Divyanshu Singh

Click Rights is an annual campaign of CRY, wherein volunteers spread awareness about a theme by medium of photography. In 2013, it started in July to make people aware of  reasons why many children are still out of school, so that the issues can be alleviated with combined effort of all, enabling children to have brighter future through education. The highlights of this campaign were photography workshops and photo talks by well known Indian photojournalists Raghu Rai and Vicky Roy, and photo-exhibitions at 1AQ Art Gallery and India International Center. To know more about the Click Rights-2013 events that took place in Delhi,  click here For further information on Click Rights 2013- Delhi Exhibition,  click here Authors: Ritika Sharma and Divyanshu Singh

Padmashree award winner Raghu Rai, one of the most recognized name in the world of photography, held an interactive photo talk – ‘Reels of Change’ for the CRY Click Rights Campaign on August 8th, 2013. Focused on the power of photography to spur people into action, the talk was well-attended and received good participation! Coverage by "The Statesman" Coverage by "Millennium Post"

The Click Rights corner set up by the CRY volunteers at IIT Delhi received encouraging response. Volunteers explained to the students about the campaign. Close to 500 students turned up. Most of them sported Click Rights tattoos on their arms, wore the Click Rights badges and ensured to promote the campaign.  You too can be a part of the Click Rights campaigns too; for details visit www.cry.org/focusonthechild

CRY Delhi Volunteers promoted Click Rights 2013 at Dilli Haat on 18th Aug 2013. The enthusiasm of Dilli Haat patrons in supporting the campaign and that of CRY Delhi Volunteers in explaining them the campaign was beyond imagination.

After the workshop discussed about in last blog-post, the participants of the workshop performed an impressive and effective street play at Begumpur community on the issue of child labour.   "The response from the audience made us feel we did justice to our play.  People, especially youth, children and women were present in large number and they also passed on the message of importance of education and the dark side of child labour which was the theme and the intention of the play. We believe that this effort would help us realise the dream of - THE ONLY WORK A CHILD SHOULD DO IS HOMEWORK" - Gaurav Agarwalla (Event Coordinator) Refer this link for more photos of the event.

In June and July 2013, Hindustan Times collaborated with CRY, under HT's "You Read, They Learn" initiative, to enrol out of school children in NCR to school. The campaign started with HT publishing ads to invite its readers to volunteer for the campaign. Approximately 400 readers turned up for the cause after seeing the ads. Then CRY Delhi Volunteers filed RTIs and conducted field surveys to figure out the regions in NCR having significant number of out of school children. Then the event kicked off with 2 orientation sessions on 23rd June 2013 and 29th June 2013. Famous cricketer, Gautam Gambhir, came up to motivate HT and CRY volunteers during the former session. Then HT volunteers, under guidance of CRY volunteers, visited previously identified communities in 9 zones of NCR and collected details of out of school children. Finally, HT volunteers, under guidance of CRY volunteers, visited the communities again to enrol children to nearest

The CRY Club at IHE, Department of Communication and Extension, held a long day kiosk at the college on 1st Aug 2013 to promote Click Rights by asking people to upload more and more relevant photographs in order to make the campaign successful. Thus the CRY club reached out to over 1000 students who are first time voters. Refer this link for more photos of the event.

After 3 years of enactment of RTE law, CRY conducted a study across India to find out status of its implementation. Here is report for the study. Authors: Ritika Sharma , Divyanshu Singh

On occasion of Anti Child Labour Day 2012, CRY Delhi Volunteers conducted a pan-Delhi study on knowledge, attitude and practices of prospective employers of children towards child labour. 1350 respondents were surveyed evenly across 9 districts of Delhi. Results obtained through analysis of the surveys were striking and helped CRY volunteers organize many awareness campaigns, focused on specific issues, in the zones that got highlighted as less aware on those issues. Thus volunteers' awareness campaigns got more focussed in terms of both targeted regions and targeted issues.  Complete report of the study is available for reference  here . Authors: Riyana Lama , Divyanshu Singh

In the wake of recent unfortunate incident of rape of 5 yrs old girl child in Delhi, CRY is striving to track and fix the issues related to protection of girl child, particularly the issue of missing children. To express their concern on the issues of missing children and protection of girl child, CRY Delhi Volunteers conducted an awareness campaign at Select Citywalk Mall, Saket, on 28th April 2013. The campaign comprised of two performances of flash mob, one at 4:30 pm and another at 5:15 pm. The novel medium of flash mob helped volunteers reach out to almost all patrons of mall who witnessed the event. Audience's support for the cause and appreciation for the campaign could be easily sensed from following: In both the performances audience joined the volunteers performing flash mob. Mall's patrons gathered densely around the atrium (the MAC Atrium), across the three floors of the mall, to watch the event. Both the performances ended with huge round of applause by audi

...on occasion of 3rd anniversary of RTE implementation  An RTE meet was organized by the All India Parents Association (AIPA) and Social Jurist on 31st March 2013, the eve of the RTE anniversary, at the Gandhi Peace Foundation. The main panel consisted of eminent advocates and philanthropists of education industry - O.P. Sharma, I.S. Gambhir and Ashok Argawal. Many remarkable points on government schools and private schools (both low income and high income) were discussed through speeches and interactive sessions. Through the interactive session, many parents, activists and students of government schools voiced their experiences and concerns. The most common of those concerns included commercialization of education, poor quality of education, exploitation of school fees, abuse of children in school, corporal punishment and discrimination of minority group children. CRY Delhi volunteers raised the security issue of schools and the issue of discrimination faced by ch

CRY Action Centers (CAC) or the RTE booths as more popularly known, are spaces created by CRY volunteers in the community to share information and take action on child rights. They also act as a referral center for cases of CR violations that are reported. Through the CAC, the CRY Volunteers have regularly engaged with key officials - the Block Education Officers, the Child Development Project Officers, Councilors, Government School principals and staff, and Aanganwadi teachers. This has also strengthened community participation and increased the volunteers' ownership, coordination, appointment seeking, detailed planning and discussions. In Delhi, the CAC are functional and regular in three Geo PAGs- Bharat Vihar (Dwarka), Dakshinpuri (Saket) and Seemapuri (East Delhi), thus representing work in 3 districts of the city.                       Detailed report of CAC is available here .

For complete article please refer to CRY's blog here . For article published in Kolkata Today refer here . For summary refer Summary Version-1 , Summary Version-2

Over the period of June 2012 to December 2012, CRY Delhi volunteers did an extensive study of Knowledge, Attitude and Practices (KAP) of potential employers of children, specifically dhaba and garage owners, towards child labor in all 9 districts of Delhi. The study revealed that many such employers were unaware of laws against child labor in India. As a follow up action, campaigns are being planned by volunteers in the areas in which the field research was done, to make the respondents aware of the laws. First event in the series was held at Hauz Khas on 20th Jan 2013. During the event, volunteers organized a rally from Hauz Khas metro station to  Aurobindo market, via Hauz Khas market. Throughout the way volunteers held in their hands placards and posters created by them to convey the intended messages to the public around. The messages conveyed were mostly laws against child labor in India and priority of education over employment in a child's life, and were c

On 27th Jan 2013 CRY Delhi Volunteers Group invited Ms. Simi Sara Thomas, Teacher at St. Thomas School, Delhi, for an interactive discussion with volunteers on her views on ways to impart education and purpose of education, published in  The Viewspaper  and Ule . The session was really great as it changed perception of volunteers about purpose of education and made them rethink about where the current education system is leading to. Some key take away points from the session were: 1. Purpose of education should be three-fold: (a) To provide helping hands to students. (b) To make students unleash their imagination. (c) To make students learn through mistakes. 2. A famous quotation of Albert Einstein goes as "Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere." Since rote learning has become vital component of current education system, imagination is facing huge ignorance. Overall, education is standardizing children and making them lose imaginati

On 23rd Dec 2012, a group of CRY volunteers visited the newly established CRY PAG (Public Action Group) at Sanjay Camp. Objectives of the visit were: 1. To assess quality of education imparted to children by schools in the region. 2. To learn about teaching related problems faced by children studying in schools in the region. 3. To learn about status of distribution of winter uniform in MCD schools in the region. Children with whom we interacted ranged from small kids coming regularly to the center for playing to grown up children studying in class 3. In total they were 16 in number, out of which 6 study at MCD schools, 5 study at private schools, 1 takes private tuition as substitute for school and 4 are small enough to attend school. To assess knowledge of the students we distributed a sheet, having counting exercises, to them. Most of the children were able to finish the exercises correctly by themselves; few who could not were supported a lot by their friends around. It