Child Cabinets – From policy to practice
Mandal Parishath Primary School and Zilla Parishath High School is located in Kapra mandal of Medchal and Malkajgiri districts in Telangana. Both the schools share the same compound. It is co-educational and total strength of these schools together is 1322 students. Telugu is the only medium of instructions in primary school section and English as well as Telugu is the medium of instructions in high school section. Mid-day meal scheme is operational in both the schools.
The Indian government launched the Swachh Bharat: Swachh Vidyalaya campaign (UNICEF) in September 2014, this initiative, translated to “Clean India: Clean Schools,” is meant to be the beginning of both critical infrastructure changes and behavioral changes to improve the Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH) throughout India. Installing Child Cabinets is one method for implementing positive peer modeling for WASH practices. Basically Child Cabinets are elected student governments comprised of multiple ministers like prime minister, education minister, health minister, cultural & sports minister, library &environmental minister, and food minister with 3-5 sub-committee members for each minister. Each minister has a specific role and function within the cabinet and student body. This case study tries to capture the performance of child cabinets in both primary and secondary section schools before and after the SaciWATERs intervention in the schools.
As per the government initiative child cabinets have been formed in the schools by electing the active students in the class and explained about their roles and responsibilities. Child cabinet members are composed of different age groups from primary, upper primary and secondary sections. Most of them are not aware of their roles and responsibilities and child cabinets were are not functioned properly due to lack of strengthening and various other reasons. As a part of the initiative SaciWATERs along with community mobilizers has given a series of orientation and training to school children on hygiene messages like hand washing, use of toilets, handling water safely, food hygiene and Menstrual Hygiene management (to core group girls), disposal of child feaces and SWM to strengthen the knowledge of the school children & teachers. Also they made them aware on WASH through IEC materials and wall paintings capturing this information. Apart from this on regular basis child cabinet meetings were conducted by the project team in the schools to strengthen the roles and responsibilities of child cabinet to make them function regularly and to create a platform for students to discuss and address issues related to education, sanitation and other activities for the development of school and also personal hygiene. Vijaya lakshmi of 9th standard takes her responsibility very serious as a prime minister, once in a month she will arrange the meeting with the cabinet ministers and sub-committee members to check on issues in the school and with their responsibilities. She says “total we are 25 members in the cabinet, I oversee all of them, and helps them in completing their tasks as a teamwork, we also take care of the primary school cabinet and train them with their roles and responsibility”. “My duty is to monitor personal hygiene of all students everyday specially during the hand washing at critical times, monitoring proper storage and safe handling of water” while adding that she said they are collecting fund from students to provide a stock of sanitary pads in the school so that girls who are in need during the school hours can use it” and together with my sub-committee members we share the responsibilities says health minister Vaishnavi. “We have other responsibilities too,” like “we check everyone’s finger nails at the morning prayer and ensure that they are trimmed and clean. We check that everyone’s uniform is clean, monitors the kitchen area and if anyone disobeys us, we will inform to the teacher” says other ministers
Since the strength of the school is very high, apart from child cabinet ministers the school also has a general student body to take care of the school development activities. Of which, school has a sanitation in-charge from the students whose name is Paramjoth of 9th standard says “ I take care of the sanitation facilities in the school, me along with sub-committee members make sure that aaya cleans the toilets twice or thrice a day to keep them clean and hygiene. We also inform and monitor that students use toilets and not defecate in open”.
The school has a MHM core group who are also a part of child cabinet. The core group students are trained 2days on building their capacity on MHM. The project team also conducted follow up sessions on Menstrual Hygiene Management to the adolescent girls to assist peer-to-peer learning and sharing of information in schools. MHM core group group is collecting fund from the students for the installation of pad bank in the school.
- Earlier the school doesn’t have a hand washing stations, SaciWATERs with an assistance from WaterAid have constructed the hand washing facilities in the school to promote hand washing as a good hygiene habit
- There are 2 girl toilets for primary section which is being shared by 128 girls, 3 toilets &4 urinals each for boys and girls in higher section which is being shared by 610 boys and 584 girls (not as per RTE norms)
Lack of sufficient sanitation facilities and cleaning of toilets thrice a day to maintain hygiene was a major issue here. Recently SaciWATERs/WaterAid has donated a toilet cleaning machine to the school to keep the toilets clean and hygiene all the time and restoration of toilets has been done. However, there still exist gap in availability of WASH facility as per the RTE norms. “This is a welcome change in the school that students are very active in performing their duties as a child cabinet members and they spent extra time voluntarily working to improve hygiene environment of the school “ says principals of MPPS and ZPHS.
“The response from the parents of the school children to the child cabinet initiative was positive” says child cabinet students and teachers. The project team is working with teachers, children’s and parents to strengthen the WASH components like infrastructure, O&M, behavioral change, hygiene education, safe drinking water and appropriate sanitation facilities (as per RTE norms).
Follow up meetings/orientation will be conducted for the students to strengthen and streamline the functioning of child cabinets towards ‘Swacch Vidyalaya’ concept. Effective functioning of the child cabinets made students to create a platform for themselves where they can share, discuss and address issues in the school to bring congenial environment for learning. To encourage the students on their roles and responsibilities the project team has given badges to the students with their role on it.