Girls Advocacy Alliance programme seen yielding positive results

Hyderabad: The State government’s Girls Advocacy Alliance programme being implemented with the help of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) since 2016 is showing positive results.

Buoyed up by the success, the Hyderabad District Child Protection Officer (DCPO) is planning to extend the programme to educate the minority sections. She intends to make announcement in this regard in Masjids on Fridays. Apart from this. She has appealed to the people to report child abuse, if any, to the District Child Proection Officer on toll-free child line number 1098.

District Child Protection Officer (DCPO) of Hyderabad Md. Imtiaz Raheem told The Hans India, “The state is committed to protect the rights of the children and ensure their development. We have established 315 child protecting committees across the city. To support this, we are collaborating with Mahita for the Girls Advocacy Alliance (GAA) programme.” “In the year 2016 we prevented 35 child marriages and in the year 2017 till now we have stopped 12 child marriages so far.

District Child Protection Officer (DCPO) of Adilabad T Rajendra Prasad said, “The Girls Advocacy Alliance programme has made the girls aware of their rights and especially the village girls.

Earlier girls were sacred of their parents and society to come out in public. The participation of girls has now increased in social events and also their numbers in schools have increased.” It gives an opportunity to the children to explain their problems to the district and government officials directly. The problems are taken care of on an immediate basis,” he said.

The Department of Women Development and Child Welfare has launched the ‘Girls Advocacy Alliance’ programme in collaboration with Mahita (an NGO). The initiative aims at promoting higher secondary education and vocational training among adults and girls to educate them on their rights and curb evils like child marriages and child trafficking from the society. Currently, this programme is active within the six districts of Telangana STate and three districts of Andhra Pradesh.

It also promotes higher secondary education to children through distance mode in association with Telangana Open School society. As of now 300 girls are being benefitted through this.

Under the flagship of Girls Advocacy Alliance, several awareness programmes have been organized. The recent one being on July 30 on the eve of World Child Trafficking day which saw the participation of DIG Anurag Sharma and other CID officials. Through this awareness meet the police officers made it loud and clear anybody involved in crimes like child trafficking would face the most stringent law of the State.

Not only this on August 22 2017, an interaction programme was organised between the school children and the government officials to have one-on-one interactions with children about their problems at Kurnool.

By: Neelam Shaw