Shivani Rathee with Shishu Panchayat members in Mewat © Shivani
With the aim to encourage urban youth to volunteer in rural areas and support them for the development of their communities, three villages — Nainagla, Agon and Doha — in Mewat were visited by UNV and Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore Foundation (GRTF) in 2011. Based on the inputs and consultations, Nainagla was chosen. Shivani Rathee was then trained in July 2011 to set up a Sishu Panchyat in the village. She was later joined by Shelly Singh. Both of them now travel to Nainagla every week to strengthen the network and to empower the children there, especially the girls. When they started, they were surprised when the woman Sarpanch (village head) initially refrained her own daughters from joining them. Despite many initial challenges, Shelly and Shivani’s efforts have helped to bring about positive changes. The SP members now meet regularly to discuss the problems and try to come up with logical solutions. They raise voice for their rights and discuss about the actions they can get involved in. The members recently organized a health rally demonstrating the importance of healthy habits as a daily regime and clean surroundings to deal with sanitation – a major problem in Mewat. A tree plantation drive was also organized by them to sensitize the children towards environment.
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Thanks to Shivani and Shelly, a change is slowly taking place. They hope they would continue to work with these children. Their work has received a lot of appreciation and recognition and was featured in Hindustan Times, a leading newspaper in India.