STRENTHENING CHILDREN’S RIGHTS ADVOCACY CLUBS IN KISINGA AND KARUSANDARA SUB COUNTIES

In an attempt to strengthen capacities of children and adolescents in schools to mitigate violence against children and adolescents,  Good hope Foundation is working with child rights advocacy clubs in the four schools that is; Kisinga Vocation S.S, Kiburara primary school, Kenyange Muslim primary school, and Karusandara SDA primary school  in Kisinga and Karusandara sub counties.  

 We organized familiation meetings with the school administration to identify and form child rights clubs and this was followed by the capacity building sessions for these clubs to share and discuss issues related to the concept of violence against children and how they can participate in preventing the vice especially through debates, MDDs and girl education movement (GEM) as approaches of empowering children with skills of preventing violence against children.

Three debate compitation were organized in the two sub counties of our operation between Karusandara SDA and Kenyange Muslim, Kiburara interclass compitation and Kisinga Vocation secondary school interclass compitation debating about ; ”Violence against children is on the increase, who are responsible and what can be done to prevent it”.

Accordingly; teachers, parents, children, church leaders, government and community members such as Boda boda men, business people were highly mention as those responsible for violence against children citing the cases of denial of basic needs by the parents, corruption, failure to provide social services, cooporal purnishments by both teachers and parents, disrespect by the children, rape ,difelemnt by the Boda boda men and the business people.

Among the remedies mentioned included;

•  Teachers should not be going to class with canes as it brings fear in children a case that makes many children not to understand what is being taught hence leading to poor performance.
•   Parents should always provide meals to the children and in time to avoide being late at school. 
•   Educating parents and communities on relevent children laws and policies.
• There is need to set strict laws as well as regulating the selling of alcoho to children 
•   Adolescents should always have faith in themselves and resist gifts as well as reporting teachers and others who abuse them sexually.
• Religious leaders should always organize missions to educate the parents on how children are parented.
•  Government should organize civic education on the rights of children
•  Civil society organizations should also carryout advocacy on the rights of children
•   Government should increase taxes on alcohol to unable children to afford alcohol
• The government also should increase and pay salaries in time to enable parents who are civil servants meet the basic needs of their children
• The government should also increase access to loans to enable parents start income gerating business to fight against household poverty
•   Local leaders and the school management committees should work hand in hand with parents to ensure that children in primary level get food at school.

Achievements

4Child rights clubs have been formed in the four schools of operation

 Capacity of 120 club members has been built to prevent violence against children and adolescents.

Three debates were successfully organized with attendance of  over 300 children and adolescents.

Over 120 Children and adolescents have gained confidence to freely speak out about violenace against children and adolescents.