‘Our Responsibility to Children’ programme begins in Kannur

A programme aimed at developing life skills in children with a special focus on parenting, mentoring and counselling has begun in the district as part of the State-wide Our Responsibility to Children (ORC) initiative under the Integrated Child Protection Programme involving various government departments.

The ORC programme was formally launched in the district on October 1 under the District Child Protection Unit (DCPU).

The programme is being implemented in schools in the district in co-ordination with the government departments of Social Justice, Health, Education, police and local bodies. The State-level executive committee with senior officials of the departments will be monitoring the district-level ORC initiatives.

“In the first phase, the ORC will be implemented in five schools in the district,” said DCPU Officer Anju Mohan. A 20-hour training module for development of life skills of children will be used for the programme.

“The module also gives attention to parenting, mentoring and counselling,” she added.

The schools where the ORC initiative will be implemented in the first phase are Government Brennen High School and Girls High School at Thalassery, Vocational Higher Secondary School at Kannur, K.P.R. Memorial Government High School at Kallyassery and Shenoy Smaraka High School at Payyannur. Each of these schools has a nodal teacher for the programme.

“While the training of the nodal teachers has been completed, steps are under way for extending the training to other teachers through the District Institute for Educational Training (DIET),” DCPU officials said.

The programme will be carried out by school-level core teams and a district-level resource group. The ORC programme would be extended to other schools in the next phase, the officials said. The district-level inauguration of the programme was done by Rural Development Minister K.C. Joseph.