You are viewing the chat in desktop mode. Click here to switch to mobile view.
X
Communicating with children during emergencies: Experiences from the COVID-19 pandemic
powered byJotCast
Suyashi Smridhi
11:47
11:48
Hello and welcome to the second session of the annual seminar, “Media and Child Rights”, hosted by Asian College of Journalism in partnership with UNICEF.
11:49
Ramya Kannan, Chief of Bureau, Tamil Nadu at The Hindu, is the moderator for the session, ‘Communicating with children during emergencies: Experiences from the COVID-19 pandemic’, with panelists S. Gomathi, Director, AhaGuru, Nandini Raman, Consultant Counsellor, and Sonal Kapoor, Founder Director, Protsahan India Foundation.
11:52
Ramya Kannan welcomes all the panelists. She says that she has personally seen how learning is happening after the disruption the pandemic had caused. There are several issues that she sees with her daughter and her classmates.
11:54
One is the yearning for companionship and the other is the need for love in classrooms that kids grow in, says Ramya. She says that it is solely missing and all kids are complaining about it. Ramya thinks that in the pandemic we are truly beset with problems that we never thought we will ever be in.
11:55
From a professional point of view, Ramya feels we seldom talk to children, but write about them often. "We write extensively on issues related to children, issues related to basic security and life." She says children are in need of institutional care, now more than ever.
11:56
Ramya: "Usually our homes have little space for children to live in." She wonders how we managed this space during the pandemic. "Repatriating them back to homes from the institutions that they were in, is the problem that confronted us", she says.
11:57
"Access to technology is also another problem that we came across during these unusual circumstances," adds Ramya.
11:58
Ramya appreciates the work done by Sonal for the vulnerable children during the pandemic and passes the mic to her.
11:59
Sonal Kapoor is the Founder Director at Protsahan India Foundation. She is a member of the expert committee on anti-child trafficking (Delhi Commission of Women) and a member of CSO Coalition to End Child Marriage in India.
12:00
"Most of my work is with adults and girls. When you go to a donor or a CSR, one of the things I found was that there was nobody to listen or ask the kids," says Sonal.
12:01
Sonal: "We need to be mindful at the sectors where the girl survives. In the pandemic, surviving became a question mark. We need to learn to pass the mic on. We think we know better, but we as a society are only learning."
12:02
"There is no one to listen to the kids, we need to know their voices," asserts Sonal.
12:03
Sonal: "In the slums of New Delhi, when the food trucks came to feed people, we realised that it was comparatively easier for men and boys to access food. In a rush when everyone comes to take food, kids were abused from behind."
12:04
Sonal highlights the fact that cases of child marriage and incest increased during the pandemic. While child marriages were talked about in the media, there was virtually no conversation about incest, she says. "As adults have a problem to talk about incest. It is easy to make everything a statistic. It is easy to see the statistics of child marriage, but not talk about incest," Sonal says. She also discussed about the recent High Court judgement about how only skin to skin non-consensual touch could be considered harassment.
12:05
Ramya thanks Sonal for her perspective and asks Nandini Raman about how to handle children who come out to seek help. Nandini Raman is a consultant counselor, a corporate trainer and a columnist with The Hindu’s educational supplement, The Edge.
12:07
Nandini says that the lockdown has been hard for everyone but for the kids, it has been harder. "They have shown us resilience in the face of lack of access to friends, schools, games etc. ever since the lockdown started," she adds.
12:09
Nandini says that the early lockdown media reports focused on spike in adults watching pornographic content and spike in domestic abuse.
12:10
Nandini: "But interpersonal conflicts and their effect on the child staying at home in terms of content on social media and that coming through teachers was neglected. Impact on children's socialisation and their alienation due to screen addiction is also not being reported."
12:11
Children's daily schedules and discipline was also challenged during the pandemic, asserts Nandini. "Many are facing juvenile depression and lack of motivation," she says.
Do you think schools should put more focus on counselling sessions for children post-pandemic?
Definitely, yes. (100% | 6 votes)
 
No, wouldn't help. (0% | 0 votes)
 
Total Votes: 6
12:12
Nandini: "Body image insecurities among children going through puberty is another challenge, exacerbated by the lockdown."
12:14
The communication with children needs to be age-appropriate, highlights Nandini. Nandini also feels that sex education needs to be very carefully planned. "The lockdown has given us a lot to reflect on," adds Nandini.
12:15
12:16
Ramya agrees that what the pandemic taught is really incredible. She appreciates the fact that Nandini mentioned how resilient children are.
12:17
Ramya says that school principals told her that schools are not really comfortable in using technology and given how access is an issue, she asks how S. Gomathi and her firm dealt with these problems.
12:18
S. Gomathi is one of the Co-Founders of AhaGuru, an educational organisation that aims to make maths and science easier.
12:19
Gomathi says that she has witnessed first-hand how kids were responding to classes during the pandemic at home. She highlights how many schools were not exposed to this method of teaching that had to be adopted suddenly.
12:20
Gomathi: "AhaGuru had been researching on the issue for close to four years and went and pitched their ideas to schools immediately as the lockdowns were announced."
12:22
"We have been to about 50 schools and gave workshops to students in March. They were comfortable with it (online teaching) by May," she adds.
12:23
Do you think schools should include more online activities in the curriculum post-pandemic?
Yes. (50% | 2 votes)
 
Not right away. (50% | 2 votes)
 
Never. (0% | 0 votes)
 
Total Votes: 4
12:24
Gomathi asserts that online learning cannot be similar to normal classroom experience. She feels that it is not possible for all kids in an online classroom to be given attention to. "So here in AHaGuru we give small quizzes to make sure that children have understood the concepts that were being taught," says Gomathi.
12:25
Gomathi: "Making the live class more interesting and engaging is the important part of what we did.  We had one main teacher who was teaching concepts and there was another mentor for 30-40 students, who was clarifying their questions."
12:26
"We have introduced all these things. I can't say it worked for all the students but can confidently say it worked for 90 per cent of them," says Gomathi. "This about the synchronous part of our work. There is an asynchronous part where, with the help of Aid India, we reached out to students in various villages across Tamil Nadu and spoke to them."
12:28
Gomathi explains that in villages, the problem is access to education. "In the schools that we worked with, the completion rate (syllabus) was really high. We are now working with close to 80,000 students."
12:29
Technology opens up many ways in reaching students, feels Gomathi. "And it is also important to note what kind of help different kinds of kids need," she adds.
Load More Messages
Connecting…