The Nilgiris district administration and the School Education Department have established a “mentorship” model involving school teachers and students to check on the welfare of students in the district.
The number of children reporting cases of abuse was increasing in the Nilgiris. As a step towards ensuring that the welfare of children was monitored, the 3,000 teachers in the district had been appointed as “mentors” for ten children each, Collector J. Innocent Divya told reporters recently.
They had been assigned the role of regularly checking on the welfare of the children either via phone or by individual visits to the homes of the children, officials said.
The District Child Protection Officer, Social Welfare Department as well as the police were also involved in organising awareness programmes in “hotspot villages” where they received complaints of abuse, harassment or violence against children.
The awareness programmes were aimed at spreading information among children as well as adults about what constituted abuse and also mechanisms which were in place for children to seek help from children’s welfare authorities.
