The Butterfly Project

Changemaker: Disha Sethi

According to WHO there are 11 million street children in India, out of which 100,000 are in Delhi alone. Children who are nameless, lack legal residential identity and are unaccounted for in India’s developing annual growth. These are the children who don’t have access to spaces and opportunities to express themselves, to learn about issues that threaten their everyday life. The NCERT (National Council of Educational Research and Training), an organization which has influenced Indian school education considerably since its inception in 1961, is also involved in making educational programmes besides publishing books, conducting educational research and training programmes focuses on providing Media Literacy to children in school. Media Literacy helps children develop skills of enquiry, self-expression, creativity and aesthetic development framework. The media has the power the challenge stereotypes, perceptions, expectation and assumption about issues that affect us. To challenge a traditional discourse that is often patriarchal, male dominant, where girls and women lack equity and equality. Added to this, the lack of access and ability to exercise informed judgment and decision-making has dire consequences at both policy tables that influence young people’s rights, where consequently and historically, young people have been and still are denied critical agency in their ability to exercise their rights. And, this is where our work begins Training Children and Adolescents from Low resource backgrounds: The programme will train 20 children and adolescents from low resource backgrounds on pre production, production and post production to create 8 digital stories on issues they feel passionately about. These digital stories will be screened in the communities of the children and other communities of children to advocate for their rights.