Srijan Bachpan

Pratigya runs a comprehensive life education programme namely Srijan Bachpan (nurturing childhood) for underprivileged children in urban slums and rural villages. The programme is designed to develop Socio Emotional Ethical Learning (SEEL) among the children who are either connected or not connected with school setting. It has basic three objectives: active participation of children in different activities at school, enhanced academic performance and to nurture them as aware and responsible members of the society. Regular weekly sessions pertaining to life skills, inter personal skills, civic education, financial education, legal education, language and communication, art & craft and extracurricular activities (like dancing, singing, debate, elocution, speech, storytelling, etc.) are organized with the help of professional resource persons, volunteers as well as mentored leaders in their own communities. Counseling sessions are also being conducted with the help of experts. Play way method and different forms of exercise are used as a tool to conduct these sessions. This programme has been instrumental in bringing the envisaged change and betterment in the personal, academic and social lives of the students.

The programme is integrated with various activities related to the holistic development of a child and are aligned to respective 4 Sustainable Development Goals.

Our achievements in last 15 years:

Pratigya's Srijan Bachpan programme has been selected and featured among top 50 Sustainable Global solutions in Youth Solutions Report 2019

  • Socio Emotional Ethical Learning (SEEL) & Counselling to over 5000 children based on the traits defined by WHO till now.

  • Over 800 students from slums in Ranchi, Jharkhand and a village in Khunti, Jharkhand are engaged every year under this programme.

  • Pratigya has a developed module for these children with the help of professors and passed out students of Asia’s most premier social work institute, Tata Institute of Social Sciences (Mumbai), Azim Premji University (Bangalore).

  • More than 50 of our children have turned today as leaders for their communities who helped the organisation in connecting more children with this programme.

Financial Learning

To provide experiential learning of financial education to children, Pratigya with Butterflies, New Delhi has started a children run financial co-operative – Child Development Khazana (CDK) along with a health co-operative - Children’s Health Co-operative (CHC) for facilitating these children access to health services, in the year 2014-15. Both the co-operatives are run by the children.

Child Development Khazana is a bank like co-operative through which the habit of savings is encouraged among the children. Children have their own Khazana accounts and they get a proper passbook for it. Interests are being credited on their savings and there is a facility of taking advance for their development purposes also. The Khazana has a Child Volunteer Manager (CVM) and Assistant Child Volunteer Manager (ACVM) who are responsible for the smooth running of Khazana and its transactions. Both the posts are chosen in a democratic way by the means of open voting.

Health & Hygiene

In addition to the financial co-operative, a health co-operative, Children’s Health Co-operative (CHC) is also run for the awareness related to the health issues of children as well as the community. Here, every member of CDK is a default member of CHC and have to abide by its terms. Each branch of this co-operative has a CHE (Child Health Educator) who leads the health related activities of the branch. This co-operative adhere the children to be more active towards their health as well as the cleanliness of their nearby environment. Children organize various kinds of activities to make the other non-CDK or non-CHC members including their community more aware regarding the health issues. The result of this initiative can be well seen by visiting the slums where Pratigya is working, where people could be now found more sensitive towards their health as well as their surroundings.

Pratigya has entered into the segment of Mental Health this year by encouraging sports and mental activities for the children. In this initiative, along with Financial and Health co-operatives, a Sports Co-operative of the children has been formed which not only looks after the sports activities, but there is a component of counseling services in the initiative. A Child Sports Educator elected by democratic process looks after the sports activities and two Counselors (a boy and a girl, preferably between 16-20 years) are selected for counseling of the children. The Sports Co-operative includes children from 8-21 years of age.

Children Cooperatives have achieved:

  • Running 6 branches of these co-operatives.

  • More than 500 children are enrolled into the membership of these co-operatives.

  • More than Rs.1,80,000 has been saved by these child members.

  • During the Covid-19 pandemic, some of our children through their CDK accounts helped their families in establishing small businesses so as to earn a surviving livelihood.

  • More than 1500 households have been sensitized through Handwashing Day campaign.

  • Child Health Educators worked as assistant for the Government “Saiyaas” in organizing health awareness camps in Chandapara village.

  • Our children act as a point of attraction in the international workshops organized by Butterflies.

  • Sports Co-operative is increasing the outreach of the organization to more number of children.