MEGHDHANUSH! What is the first thing that comes to your mind when you 
hear this word? Obviously, the thing that comes to each of our mind is a rainbow. Meghdhanush is the name of the new campaign initiated by SAATH with an aim at raising awareness among people on the issue of Child Labour. I am sure that the question that would now be concerning you is why is the name of the campaign Meghdhanush and how is it connected to the issue of Child Labour? Meghdhanush is a campaign which will have a series of seven workshops for the kids in the course of the year with each event connected to a colour of the rainbow and thus, the name Meghdhanush. The objective of the campaign is to add colour to a child’s life.
This campaign is associated with our programme called Child Friendly Spaces (CFS) which works towards providing informal education to the child labourers and children belonging to vulnerable households. We want more and more people to get encouraged from this initiative and help us in adding colour to the lives of our little children.
The campaign was launched on 12th June, 2014. You all must be wondering as to why we chose this particular date for the launch? It’s simple. 12th June is a World Day against Child Labour and so, we thought that this was the best day to launch our campaign. Our hospitality partner for the launch of the campaign was Courtyard Marriott. Our guests of honour for the launch were Mr. HP Singh, Director General of Police, Mr. Gaurav Singh, General Manager of Courtyard Marriott and Mr. Rajendra Joshi, the founder of SAATH. The event was started with a small act to tell people to not discourage the kids as we never know what the kids would be doing 20 years down the line. We then, welcomed our guests of honour with a token and then invited Mr. HP Singh, Mr. Gaurav Singh, Mr. Rajendra Joshi, Ms. Keren Nazareth, Ms. Chinmayi Ben, one of our CFS center teacher and one of our CFS center child to light the lamp.
Children performing at Meghdhnush Launching
Post the lighting of the lamp, our guests of honour shared their views on the issue of child labour and on this initiative taken by SAATH. We then had our little kids perform a welcome dance on Vande Mataram. We also had two of our kids sing a Lokgeet for us. The audience were informed about the seven workshops that we would be conducting for our little kids in the course of the year. The guests were informed about the seven CFS centres that SAATH is currently running. A positive case story of one of our little kid who studies in our Vejalpur CFS centre was shared and he interacted with the guests about his experience at CFS class. Gopal Bhai, the coordinator of our CFS programme and all the teachers of our CFS centres shared their experience with SAATH and about the difficulties that they face in getting children to join the CFS centres.
At the end the guests were requested to lend their valuable support to help us fight the issue of child labour. All the children present at the event were given gifts from Women of Voyage Circle. The launching ended on a very good note and we look forward to more positive response and support for the next events to help as many children as possible.
SAATH 