SPAN could able to engage 10 Youth leaders who identified 182 child labourers from 6 Wards of Kolkata Municipal Corporation. Youth leaders through regular educational sessions with identified child labourer could ensure regular school attendance of 129 child labourers. Youth and women councils are in process of formulation in these slums while the local schools are also connected with the process through conducting Jeevan Path sessions.

SPAN also have taken joint initiative with District Child Protection Unit of Kolkata to form Ward level Child Protection committees in 9 wards of Kolkata Municipal corporation.

Sensitization and awareness on prevention of child labour was  organised at community, local schools and with local citizen forum.

SPAN developed a community based child protection System in 5 Tea Gardens of Batabari 1 No GP of Matiali Block of Jalpaiguri district with the help of local Youth Councils and Woment Councils. The local Women and youth council could identify 400  cases of child trafficking in last 5 Years in 80 percent of cases they were able to push forward the process of rescue, rehabilitation and follow up.

Local Youth councils and selected 25 youth leaders were oriented and trained on the issue of child protection and state child protection system. They have taken lead role in formation of Village Level Child Protection Committees in different villages. They are in process of regular tracking of children through JEEVAN-PATH sessions in schools and children group Sessions.

SPAN is focussing on facilitating leadership among local youth and women in every villages of its operational area through formation of Youth and women councils. Selected Youth council leaders are mobilised and trained as CHILD RIGHTS DEFENDERS. Child Right Defenders are capacitated on the functional and operational areas of state child protection system which includes Integrated Child Protection System / Mission Vatsalya and all its local level provisions and services.

Child Rights Defenders along with local youth councils organise orientation of school Teachers, Students, Panchayat members, Village/Ward Child Protection Committees on the issue of Child Protection.

Child rights defenders regularly track the children of their respective villages through Home visit, JEEVAN-PATH sessions in schools, PATH-O-CHAKRA sessions in school, and Children Group/Child Club Meeting at Schools and community. Information or identification of the cases of Child Labour, Missing children, Child Abuse, Child Marriage is done through this process.

Village or Ward level Child Protection committee or Panchayat/Municipal Counsellor are informed about the cases of unprotected children by the Child Rights Defender and the case take on immediately for further rescue and rehabilitation action.
The Police, Block Welfare Officer, School Teachers are informed about the cases as per requirement
to take necessary action. The local youth councils through Child rights defenders follow up the cases.

Pathochakra is a process towards agency building in school for the children of 10-14 years old between the classes of V to VIII enhancing their involvement in Knowledge area development through organising such activities, those demand digging information and know how resulting the children browsing through printed materials or materials in Internet. Such is the idea of escalating the reading habit among the students in these  years.

Presently SPAN conducting regular "Pathochakra" sessions in 2 higher secondary schools of  Basanti Block of South 24 parganas district of West Bengal and 1 middle school at Shikaripara Block of Dumka District of Jharkhand.

The process begins with holding regular sessions/workshops at schools with the students to plan certain activities, which have a connection to issues, which will profoundly impact their academic persuasion versatile.

Such exercises will generate an idea of forming clubs on climate, literature, culture, and science, and according to the interest children will fall in groups/clubs. Working in these clubs, student will get an opportunity to cultivate their skills and learn develop deeper understanding on each of topics under the broader headings of climate, literatre, culture, and science.

There could be three basic clubs - Green Club on Climate, Yellow club on literature and culture and Sience Club.

Open Assembly for Children's Learning (Pathshala) centres were organised by local Women Council (Narishakti) and Youth Council  with the help of SPAN for the visibility of children in public life in an organised way to reduce vulnerabilities and ensure their regular attendance in school for quality education. Presently 10 Pathshalas are operational in 7 rural blocks of 5 districts of West Bengal and Jharkhand catering 249 children of 6-14 years of age. This children covered by Pathshala are mostly irregular in school or were school drop-out who recently connected to school.

Pathshala will ensure the following points:

• Head counting children to track the missing child if there is any.
• Ensure that all children attend there school regularly
• Help children to prepare there lessons for schools as most of them are first generation learner and there is nobody at their home to help them.
• Regular sessions for children on values, rights and entitlements and environment, ecology, and climate. Games, music, and theatre are also part of the activity in these sessions.

Youth from the villages who are the member of local youth councils provide their time as mentor for children in these Pathashala. These youth mentors are trained by SPAN and economically compensated jointly by the contribution nfrom local women councils and SPAN.

SPAN could prevent 150 child marriages and could support 25 cases of child sexual abuse for Justice and rehabilitation of victim through Community based child protection system involving Panchayats, Police, ASHA Workers, School Teachers, SHG group members and villagers in Kalimpong district of West Bengal

The economic crisis, long closure of schools and suspension of the services of child protection during the pandemic period left children most vulnerable across the country.  Particularly in the state of West Bengal and Jharkhand rampant increase in the rate of early marriage, teenage pregnancy, child trafficking and child labour has been observed. When the state child protection system is failing to protect the children there is a need of robust Community based Child Protection System to be taken on in mission mode under the leadership local youth and women along with community based institutions such as Panchayat and Schools.

SPAN find its role in capacity building of Youth councils and Child Rights Defenders as well as facilitating convergence of stakeholders at block and district level connecting local Child Rights Defenders and Youth Councils with Child Welfare Committee, District Child Protection Unite, Block Level Child Protection Committee, Police and Special Juvenile Police Unit, etc. for ensuring the harmony in functioning between the district/block level and local level child protection system.

Students and teachers from 13 High schools, 50 Youth volunteers, Member of 10 Gram Panchayat were oriented on the issue of child protection focussing prevention of child marriage, teenage pregnancy and child sexual abuse. Youth councils are in process of formulation in these villages while regular tracking of children are going on through local youth volunteers. Orientation of VLCPC members on child protection issues is in progress. Regular awareness on prevention of early marriages were going on while 60,000 local people has taken formal pledges against child marriage.

“Jeevan Path” conducted in 16 schools in 4 districts of West Bengal  and 1 district of Jharkhand involving all concerned stakeholders and covering 1400+ primary school student. Government primary schools are identified as those weak in terms of number of teachers, students, and overall performance.

Jeevan Path is a process that ascertain child’s impulsiveness to learn. The Jeevan path sessions will be facilitated for meeting twin objectives. First, the child should learn innovatively to fluently read, write correctly, comprehend, and solve appropriately. Second, children’s learning in classroom to be integrated with the environment outside and will restore school ecology (teacher-student, teacher-parents, parents-children, children-children) by caring concerns within the democratic polity of the country.

The enabling is possible 1) innovatively through children’s involvement in projects, (these projects will be developed locally by mentors and involving local youth, in workshops) which is made keeping the context and local culture in mind. Children, however, will be able to grasp the knowledge, and will evidently participate to learn, 2) through collective learning, which may be organized around the life and livelihoods of local populace, where collective knowledge is reinvented to make it become a content of learning, revealing the fact that everyone contributes to knowledge creation and learning, 3) craving in imaginary character resembling someone, who matches the child’s experience and children are engaged in dialogue through letters and other forms of communication, and finally, 4) around online presentation.

It is evident from the fact, revealed from several studies during covid and post-covid situation that children mostly from the marginalised background have discontinued their school education. The reasons being multidimensional, but overarching was being the learning loss as the online education reached only to a handful of children, due to lack of connectivity and availability of devices issues.

Having understood the situation, which was so deplorable, SPAN designed and introduced ‘JIBAN-PATH’ as relevant Education and Learning for Life and from Life as well.

This thought, however, is borrowed from “Education that is transformational”, It is the liberating education envisaged by Tagore’s Shantiniketan of the 1930s, Gandhiji’s Nai Taleem of the 1940s, and the vision of education as a force in nation- building and social transformation of dalits and minorities articulated by Ambedkar, Nehru and Maulana Azad in the 1940s and 1950s.

The objective of education is its role in social mobilisation and transformation directed specifically at questions of caste and gender asymmetry and minority empowerment and also fostering democracy as a way of life; inculcating a respect for constitutional values of plurality and secularism in children; promoting decentralisation to facilitate generation of locally relevant knowledge and curriculum practices; sensitisation to environmental issues; and broadening of the scope of curriculum to include traditional crafts, work and knowledge.

Ensure that learning is shifted away from rote methods, enriching the curriculum to provide for overall development of children rather than remain textbook centric, making examinations more flexible and integrated with classroom life and nurturing an overriding identity (Teacher and students belong to the different caste, creed, religion, and gender identity) informed by caring concerns within the democratic polity of the country.

SPAN’s initiative on the process of mitigating the learning loss due to Covid – 19 and strengthening the existing school education system due to impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on education, which is both unprecedented and widespread in education history.

In five districts e.g. in Kolkata, North and South 24 Parganas, Purulia and Jalpaiguri SPAN's staff and volunteers would now work with children, teachers, youth, parents, and community around 16 government primary schools.

Regular workshops with children, youth, and teachers in primary school on language, Math and environment are being organised to boost the knowledge, skills, and practice and fill the learning gap in a fearless environment where rote learning is completely discarded.

SPAN is also ensuring all the children returning and cent percent attendance of children by making door to door visits to spread awareness around education and related issues.
The young graduates and college goers as volunteers to take leadership in the process. They got the initial training. They will be participating in these Jeevan Path workshops and accelerate the learning process with the guidance of the local teachers. They will be the child rights defenders of their locality.

Besides, Jeevan Path truly adheres the principles and norms evolved from the National
Education Policies of 1968, 1986, 1992 and Kothari commission Report. It also follows and tries to see RTE Act as the reality. SPAN has developed a detailed module for Jeevan Path by consulting several teachers.

It gives significant importance to the syllabus. However, it pays most attention to the learning of the children. The process of deriving examples from their environment and relating it to the syllabus will reduce the fear of examination and rote learning.

Jeevan Path was introduced not only for engaging children with school education for learning recovery due to Covid or the pandemic era, rather it hopes to contribute suggestively in the syllabus, curriculum, teaching-learning process and the school ecology.