The Community Development Working Committee, Local Agenda 21 Petaling Jaya has decided to making PJ a child friendly city. A Child Friendly City is a local system of good governance committed to fulfilling children's rights. It is a city where the voices, needs, priorities and rights of children are an integral part of public policies, programmes and decisions. Chapter 25, Agenda 21 mentions that as children make up about one third of the total population, they have equal rights as for adult to enjoy their rights and to share their thoughts about making this World, a sustainable place to live, play, study, shop and work later. Presently, many of us tend to ignore the plight of children and work on plans and programmes that are so called "good" for them. We always take thing for granted and presume that children will be in agreement with what we have planned the best for them. However, the rising cases on juvenile, child abuse, abandoned child, gangsterism in the school, children safety, kidnapping of children, school drop out, widening of generational gap and other social ills have some how rather vindicated that this approach of planning everything for the children is not the only solution. Sidelining the children without involving them into the planning and decision making process over matters concerning about their future personal, community and city development is not right.
The proposed plan is envisioned to making PJ a child friendly city by focusing into the development and participation aspects. Children will be the equal partner in development process. Children is at the centric of development. Children will be given amble opportunities for good personal development. For all these to happen, they are the drivers, participants and beneficiaries.
The famous saying of "do not plan for me without me" is very much applicable here.
Children have been chosen as this age group is the easiest entry point for engaging wider participation of community members. Presently attracting the participation of adult for community development is rather difficult. Members of the community except the senior citizen and unless the issues are crucially relevant to them always cite work commitment for an excuse of not participating in the community groups. This ends up with most of the community groups are managed by senior citizens in which social activities are also centred for this group of community members. Community development movement has slowly losing its preference to the other segment of community. Thereby having children-centred programmes is hopefully can help to attract participation from wider groups of community members. Past experiences have shown that children art contest, children talent contest, parenting talk, free nutritional talk and family medical check up are programmes that are able to attract good participation.
Hopefully the choice is right in enlarging the movement for community development, and i believe it can subjected to strong will and support from multi stakeholders as well as efficient mechanism of service delivery.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment