Unnati knows that schools often don’t have the facilities and staff capacity needed to create a friendly environment for children. Schools are normally very basic; classrooms are bare and don’t provide a positive learning environment. Teachers often don’t have the skills needed to teach effectively, particularly in terms of using interactive learning techniques, corporal punishment is common and records of individual students tend to be either exceedingly limited or non-existent.
The Child-Friendly School (CFS) concept seeks to comprehensively address the needs of children, concerned as much with health, safety, security, nutritional status and psychological wellbeing as with traditional education. The concept aims to create a learning environment that is child-centred, gender-sensitive and inclusive to children of all castes, ethnicities and cultural backgrounds. Unnati works to meet these goals through working with SMCs, instilling the concepts of CFS within them and motivating them to implement these concepts within schools.
We also work to implement Child Cabinets within schools, and representatives are elected from every class. Child Cabinets are responsible for providing children with a voice, and children take on specific issues within their school, such as environment, culture, sports and others.