School: RYAN INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL
    navi mumbai, maharashtra, india

3 students, ages students of age 14 & 13 worked together to complete this Doors to Diplomacy project on March 18, 2008. They have participated in Doors to Diplomacy in the following year(s): 2007

Classes and Teachers: (coaches)rashmi singh & sheebha ajai,(students)dhwanil shah,abhiraj darshankar & shruti kokate

E-Mail contact:

Our School's Web Site: http://www.ryansanpada.com

1. Description of Our Team

Our team is a combination of versatile talents with inherent strength, dedication and approach. To make this project successful the whole team had completely comprehended the practical difficulties of the children living in the civilized society. Dhwanil, (14), is the most experienced member and data analyzer of the team. He has taken extreme pain in compiling data and day to day events. He is having excellent knowledge as to contemporary developments and able to present it regarding the various problems facing the fast growing world needs to be lamented. He had to spend sleepless nights in sitting front of the computer to have a compiling all. His creativity is excellent and he is having the tremendous potential to adapt to the situations and come out with excellent result. Abhiraj, (14), He is the person in charge and responsible for giving life line to this website by taking photographs and preparing the skit. The picture which he had clicked is the testimony of risk he has undergone considering the subject matter involved. He has dared to visit the work place and shown the tremendous courage in clicking the photographs. He is the highly ambitious, enthusiastic and technical expert of our team. The entire credit as to creating, modeling and editing this website goes to him. Shruti, (13), She is our media manager as well as the person responsible for collecting data from the public concerning the view point.she is also the life of the team.she is very realistic and ambitious and very awesome at asking quizzical questions. Each data collected on the basis of the standard questionnaire shows the mind set of the people. It is will be a surprise and at the same time interesting to say that certain highly educated individuals are not aware about the child labour as a hindrance to the future of the nation, at the same time poor people living in the lower strata of the society is aware of the fact that it is wrong but they don't know why. Something is truly said that“teachers are known as the world’s biggest preachers”.Without the help and knowledgable guidance of both our teachers:rashmi miss(40) and sheebha miss(32) our project could not achieve its aim.They guided us at each and every point when we needed a hand of help.we were accompanied by the teachers wherever we went for survey or interviews. Hard efforts …

2. Summary of Our Project

The main objective of our project is make aware the people about eradicating this evil menance of child labour from our society It appears that on account of complexities of various problems staring at the civilized society, the modern governments fails to give its proper attention and priority to the alarming issues faced on account of child labour, and which appears to be an incomprehensive panacea. We are putting our little effort to curb this menace through this web page with special emphasize to the South Asia. The state is the guardian of the person and property of the children in addition to their parents. In spite of various rights and directives enshrined in various constitutions where in the government machinery works the directives and rights and lies in paper only. A few governments are successful in bringing contemporary legislations to curb the menace. Social awareness being the key in eradicating this evil, apart from the state, the individual responsibility lies with each of the Citizens, NGO?s and other voluntary government organizations to strengthen the foundation of the civilized society. The position is the same in almost all developing as well as under developed countries when the government had to survive with latest market competitions wherein the state lost its sight in ensuring the basic human conditions. It is a social reality in a backward country that, the people need to work from sunrise to sunset to feed their little ones. In a place where literacy, poverty, big family size, economically weaker section, the parents are compelled to push their children knowingly or unknowingly for child labour. Economic weakness coupled with social set up needs to be improved on a large scale to curtail the child labour. Thus we think that its high time now to stand against the devil panacea prevailing in the society and work harmoniously so that the tiny labourers are free to be children

3. Our Computer and Internet Access

A. Percentage of students using the Internet at home:more than 50%

B. Number of workstations with Internet access in the classroom:none

C. Connection speed used in the classroom:not sure

D. Number of years our classroom has been connected to the Internet:1

E. Additional comments concerning your computer and/or Internet access (Optional):

Unending needs of man resulted into various discoveries and research. In this modern world, a lot of new technologies have been invented and people are adopting them fast. But... Even today, a large portion of our country’s population is not aware of accessing Internet. If we need to improve our present status, each and everyone should contribute towards the progress of the country. We accessed the Internet, learnt designing of web pages and were able to present our project in the form of web site.

4. Problems We Had To Overcome

Our Flash drive corrupted and due to that entire that data was lost.virus attacked at the back up copy.Both of these things happened simultaneously and we had to re-do the entire project Since many people were involved in the project, tranfer of data of large size was also creating hurdles.Annual exams were also going on at the time of finishing this project.We didn’t face too many problems until the finishing touches of the project. Although information was gathered quite easily, small problems occurred; some of the materials were hard to find, but in the end we managed to complete it successfully. “It is surmounting difficulties that makes great works done”.thus these difficulties too taught many things and we overcame many hurdles.

5. Our Project Sound Bite

“Children are the hands by which we take hold of heaven.” Sincere Social service is considered as the best service to society. There are people who dedicate their whole life for Social service and profit motive and such person are considered as the representative of the God on earth. The Earth is often considered as the mother and the mother always protect its children. We are the children of Mother Nature and we need to protect the interest of the fellow human beings. Among the human beings the children are considered as the representative of the god because of their innocent attitude. We should resist and at the same do not allow our brothers and sisters to be exploited by unscrupulous elements in the society. Our attempt is a step towards that direction .

6. How did your activities and research for this Doors to Diplomacy Project support standards, required coursework and curriculum standards?

This project is the result of the cumulative thinking of a few students who decided to put their effort to cull the menace of child labour around the globe. As the issue of child labour was included in the curriculum the students decided to take up this social issue and started collecting primary as well as secondary data to substantiate the issue.we held debates and drawing competitions to see the views about this menance of children in our school.we further conducted poem and essay writing competitions among the 7 th and 8th standard students of our school. About 150 surveys were collected through which acknowledged about the awareness of people globally.almost 50 online surveys were done on the net. It is to be noted that during the past few years due to advancement of technology the information and data are available on our finger tips. The moment we realized that in a country like India around 90 million out of 179 million children in the six to fourteen age groups do not go to school and are engaged in child labour and it shows that close to 50 per cent of children are deprived of their right to a free and happy childhood. This was actually an eye opener for the us and we decided to convey this burning issue amidst the public at large. The students of today are the responsible citizens of tomorrow. It is inevitable that they need to confront with the problems staring with the humanity at large once they go out of school to understand the pulse of the issue and the reasons there of. It could be considered as tremendous experience and exposure to speak to a child while he was doing the child labour. We interviewed some of the child labourers and came across some bitter facts of life.

1) What information tools & technologies did you used to complete your Doors to Diplomacy project?

We used 1 computer with internet connection, telephones to contact teachers, directors of the schools and libraries, to get information. Digital camera to take photos of students, scanner, books, resources of libraries, dictionaries and to conduct presentation Following computer software used by us: Adobe Photoshop, Adobe ImageReady, Word, FTP and Front Page.We interviewed the child labourers using a handycam as well as a recorder.Newspapers proved of great help about consequences about the topic.

2) In what ways did you act as "ambassadors" and spokespersons for your Doors to Diplomacy project both on-line and in person.

The root cause and main concern to cure this growing menace of child labour needs to be addressed with proper attention as mentioned above. This project is the result of constant study and understanding of the records available with us. Social awareness seems to be the pillar which we need to strengthen to eradicate this social evil. As an ambassador 'I would thirst my concentration in exhorting the necessity to eradicate the child Labour our society. The webpage can be used for education, interaction and communicating the concerned in bringing awareness among the people by conducting seminars, surveys etc

3) What has been the impact of your project on your community?

The impact of the project was very significant , many community members even didn’t know that children have rights and what is child labour before introducing with our project, some learned about convention 182 and school program, and some learned how to take actions and support efforts to reduce child labour. We hope that our web site will be a manual to people who wish to know more about this problem and take actions against this problem.after doing so many surveys and interviews and coming to know about the conditions of the tiny labourers we have plans to organise a centre named:VATSALYA which literally means love and care.we would try to render the essence of love and care to make there life fruitful.we also collected the funds for the welfare of the child labourers.

4) How did your project involve other members of your community as helpers and volunteers?

The public at large was very co-operative to the movement. The students had regular meetings and interaction with voluntary organization like ‘cry’, which is an organization, stands for the cause of children. At the request of the children the school had convened the meeting of the parents and requested to hold presentations and skits in the presence of the members of the Housing societies thereby exposing the issues to the public. The response from the parents and teachers were overwhelming. At the request of the students the school authorities had conducted essay writing Competition, debate and poem writing and painting competitions. Apart from that the students had to visit cobblers shop to factories to verify and enquire the number of children were employed. The students had to face bitter resistance from the employers and in order to avoid confrontation they disguised themselves to interact with the children.

5) Discoveries, Lessons and Surprises (Optional)

During the realization of our project we have gained new skills which will help us in realizing other projects in the future and there were many discoveries and surprises. We have learned to research! Before we were doing small researches for classes, but this time we have made enormous research and worked on very huge materials. While researching, we gained new skills like analyzing, planning, writing and thinking creatively. The most interesting discovery was when we found that our government hasn’t ratified convention 182 while other neighbor countries ratified it. We were very sad and disappointed when we got statistics of child labour in the world; of every 100 children in the world 16 are child laborers. when we interviwed the child laboourers we came across some bitter facts of life.it also helped us to focus on different arena of child labour through different sources