A month-long summer festival will be organised by Children's Parliament, Tamil Nadu and Puducherry, in May in various parts of the State, including Chennai.
The Children's Parliament was founded in 1997 with the support of Neighbourhood Community Network (NCN), a voluntary organisation based in Nagercoil. It has nearly 7,000 such forums functioning in village and district levels of which 150 are in Chennai. Addressing presspersons here recently, NCN's founder Edwin John said the objective of the festival is to provide training in leadership skills, initiation into social involvement and personality development for children.
Besides releasing handwritten magazines of the children, cultural events, documentary film festivals and environment day would be organised. The festival would be conducted in cooperation with the elected representatives and government officials, he said.
On the Children's Parliament, he said each neighbourhood parliament has its own prime minister and ministers. The members are aged up to 18. Besides problems pertaining to children, they also involve themselves in solving the civic issues such as laying of new roads and facilities at day care centres in their areas.
The Children's Parliament state level prime minister M.Muthuselva Ganesh, who is a tenth standard student in Theni district, highlighted several success stories across the State wherein children representatives helped in sanction of a bridge in Dindigul district and mainstreaming school dropouts.
“We also involve ourselves in rescuing child labourers”, he said.
