It all started with a dream of a the-then airline purser in the 1970’s. Borrowing Rs.50 from his mother, Rippan Kapur and his six friends established Child Rights and You, commonly known as CRY, with a desire to reduce the disparities between privileged and unprivileged children along with providing the basic rights of survival, participation, protection, and development. Rather than implementing these functions at a small-scale, they started a network where individuals had similar visions of a secure future for children. This vision is encompassed by individuals as an agent of change. Currently, operating from its head office in Kolkata, India; CRY is a social organizing perception of children across India, the USA, and UK.

 

Formed in March 2010, CRY IIT Kharagpur chapter was initiated to bring a change in the lives of the underprivileged children. With the help of Saptak Mohanta, a former intern at CRY Kolkata, and a few other motivated acquaintances, a strategic team was established who delved in the mission of awarding Children’s rights in and around the campus. 

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This chapter has garnered students from diverse ranges and levels of academia, from engineering to law, sciences to management, undergraduates to research scholars. At present, Prof. Priyadarshi Patnaik (HSS Department) and Prof. Ashok Kumar Pradhan (Electrical Engineering Department), guiding their way to enlarge the capacity of the vision.

   

The influence of one’s social, economic and political atmosphere creates the basis of a child, which fabricates the human being that we are today. Deprivation in one of the causes can turn out to be a stumbling block in childhood and a hindrance in the growth of an adult's personality. Therefore, this chapter is mobilized by four groups which are assigned separate missions to fulfill for maintaining a balance between the growth and development and intermingling with the society with a positive outlook.

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• Team Paathshala: They are responsible for a child's education. They have adopted two schools, namely Arasini Primary School and Amlatoria Primary School, in the rural areas of Kharagpur. Each Saturday, throughout the academic year, classes are being conducted on topics that are chosen based on the school’s syllabus. With the idea of broadening the scope of the study arena beyond the syllabus, these are general topics that are showcased in an audio-visual platform for superior understanding. 

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• Team Eureka: They are the bearer of Science experiments and working models. They prepare various working models based on scientific experiments in a simplified manner. With the aim of identifying and sharpening the young scientific minds for future endeavors, they visit different schools with working models demonstrating the principles behind the surrounding environment.

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• Team Unity: They are the messenger of the community meeting. They work in the adopted school of the chapter where issues such as health, hygiene, education, moral and sexual abuse, realization on the rights and information of government documents, and policies are discussed. These sessions are conducted twice per semester. With the objective of spreading community and individual awareness on the topics. Other than this, the team conducts special activities that range from organizing medical camps, celebrating republic & independence days, sports meet, drawing competitions along with regulating primary surveys on diverging social issues.

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• Team Project Baalrakshak: They are the conveyor of child sexual abuse awareness. They work in collaboration with assorted institutions, specifically schools, in the rural and peri-urban Kharagpur, West Medinipur, and Jhargram areas. With the desire for a safer sexual environment for the children, they conduct workshops on child sexual abuse. These workshops are specialized for children, adolescent young kids, teachers, and parents, adoptive in comfortable surroundings to discuss topics that are otherwise tabooed in the society. 

 

Team Project Baalrakshak started way back on 10th September 2016 by Mr. Rajarshi Debnath, a then PhD scholar at Vinod Gupta School of Management. Over the years the team has evolved in terms of new ideas and formatted state of the art content to discuss the societal peril of child sexual abuse among kids and their parents.

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We, team Project Baalrakshak conduct usually an hour long workshop in the schools for all the classes ranging from pre-primary to standard 12. The content for the kids upto class 8 is a bit different from the class 9 onward adolescent kids. We mainly discuss safe touch, unsafe touch and confusing touch to them. We also explain what are the private body parts to them. A basic idea of how to keep themselves safe and basic self defence skills is also taught to the kids. Finally, we provide them with childline helpline number, and other means of filing any complaint regarding any sort of abuse which they may ave come across. Along with these things the adolescent kids are also taught about masturbation, menstruation, the concept of consent and other physical and psychological changes that they are going through with a larger goal of imparting an idea of gender inclusive society to them. We also talk to the parents and try to break and normalize the stigmas, taboos and misconceptions regarding child sexual abuse. They are also requested to create an environment for holistic development of the kids at home. The symptoms of sexual abuse, how to deal with it and how to take legal actions agains the culprits are also told to the parents. (For a detailed description of the workshops kindly go through the main report of team Project Baalrakshak, which is also available on the website)

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Many kids and their parents have broken their silence and came out with their traumatic experience of sexual abuse first time after attending our workshop (For a detailed statistics please refer to the statistics section on the website). We also have a child counselor working with us who helps the kids in distress and parents are directed to the proper legal procedure.

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As a follow up of our workshop we distribute multilingual pamphlets among the teacher and parents and we also provide the schools with infographic posters depicting our workshop for the regular reminder to the students and the parents.

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Our team is affiliated with Paschim Medinipur district Police and Kharagpur Municipality. In every workshop, police personnel attend and address the students and their parents in order to bridge the communication gap between them. West Medinipur police authority has extended their helping hand in our aid in every possible way and we express our heartfelt gratitude for that.

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Under Project Baalrakshak till date 120 sessions have been conducted in 35 schools where children from nursery to class XII participated, also 44 sessions were conducted with the parents of the children. During the Covid pandemic, a total of 2 online sessions were conducted where children from nursery to class VIII participated. The workshop for police personnel of Dakshin Dinajpur was conducted, in which a total of 20 police personnel including lady sub-inspectors, Deputy Superintendent of Police, and Superintendent of Police. Till date, a total of 7646 children and parents have attended the sessions. Now team “Project Baalrakshak” has 12 members in the team and successfully organizes sessions with the support of the volunteers.

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Project Baalrakshak pledges to work with utmost sincerity to eradicate the social peril of child sexual abuse. We will always strive to make an inclusive, gender sensitized and safe environment for the kids where they can grow up safely. The sapling we water and nurture today will give us fruits tomorrow.

“Together, Let’s make our society safe for children”