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Education
Program for Children and Community Mobilization (EPCCM)
Goal of the Program
Formation of a civil
society where children' rights are taken care of and parents
and the state by realizing their specific roles and duties,
provide children their fundamental rights
Flashback
EPCCM rests main emphasis on awareness
of children's rights and mobilization for active involvement
of the communities in the struggle for restoration of the
rights of the children. The program basically germinated
from "Child Labor Education Pilot Project" and
"Child Rights Education and Literacy Project".
The former project supported by World Accord Canada and
South Asia Partnership-Pakistan was funded in 1994. The
project was later taken up again with the same partnership
till 1999. In 1999, Catholic Relief Services (CRS) then
extended its financial support for a year to IFP for program.
In the first project, IFP opened
four educational centers for laboring children at the Lahore
factory area. Later, under Child Rights Education and Literacy
Project, Insan Foundation-Pakistan started educational and
community mobilization activities in 6 different communities
around Lahore. In this project the Foundation reached to
rural and semi-rural communities and started educational
process. By the end of this project all the communities
(where Insan Foundation is undertaking project) were insisting
upon continuation of the educational program and feeling
themselves as capable of controlling the project in independent
capacity. In order to further continue and transfer the
control, IFP went in partnership with CRS.
EPCCM Today
EPCCM is a combination of literacy
skills, orientation of child rights, peace and gender issues,
theatre activities, exposure visits, dialogues with parents
and rallies with laboring and on-the-street male and female
children. It seeks to equip children with critical consciousness
about issues and incidents happening about them. The program
is basically a social laboratory for IFP where it interacts
with children at the grass roots, develops parallel educational
strategies and raises bulwark of public opinion about the
issue of child rights.
With the child-centered learning
environment, the program is presently in the process of
upgrading and strengthening Vision Homes (education centers
for underprivileged children) in the light of the Evaluation
Study. The culmination of the program now sees the role
of the community, teachers, parents and local government
in the future of the program.
Till EPCCM re-shapes itself on sustainable
grounds, education and other activities will continue. The
program produces one play quarterly on different themes
like:
The partnership with SAP-Pk, World
Accord Canada and CRS has opened new venues for Insan Foundation
to come up with better vision towards child rights and the
skills that were required to mobilize masses to participate
in the struggle for change.
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