Child Rights Education and Action Movement (CREAM), BREADS Bangalore’s flagship programme for promoting child rights in 10 districts in Karnataka, successfully completed the second phase (2016-2020) of its implementation. In consolidation of its activities and impact during the project period, three reports were brought out by BREADS: Programme Report, Impact Report and External Evaluation Report. A brief summary of the Impact Report is presented below.
The CREAM II Impact Report documents the impact of the programme on the children, communities, social structures, and administrative systems in the areas of implementation. It assesses CREAMS’ impact on children as citizens, and in turn, their participation in decision-making in their communities. As a result of child rights education, children in the project areas showed 99-100% awareness of their rights, while parents also became highly receptive to children’s participation in their own affairs and in protecting their rights. Sensitisation and awareness among Child Protection Committees (CPCs) was almost 100% with high local involvement in issues of child rights. 1558 children were involved in CRC Network Formation/Meetings and 98 leadership trainings were conducted for 6072 children. These empowered children were able to use existing mechanisms to combat child rights violations such as child marriage and child labour, address the Press and political representatives, and advocate with government and societal structures for the promotion of child rights.
The resource materials brought out by BREADS through the CREAM programme were highly beneficial to teaching child rights in government schools, where teachers and principals were key figures of impact. CREAM II successfully facilitated a convergence among government departments and civil society to prevent violations and protect child rights. The Makkala Grama Sabha was also used as an effective platform for community mobilisation as also the CPCs, where the CREAM staff were called in by the government departments to train their own staff in facilitating these processes effectively. The CREAM II programme also partnered successfully with the Education and Labour departments to ensure children were rescued from child labour and brought back to school.
