At city workshop,rural children share their nightmares

Children from Kosi,Jharkand,Gujarat,Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra have several heart-wrenching stories like these to share. They have come to attend ‘Voices of children – impact of climate change’, a workshop organised by Holistic Child Development of India (HCDI). The workshop aims at understanding the lives of children from rural India and the impact of climate change on their education,health,psychology and the livelihood of their parents.

A total of 41 children from the four states participated in the workshop. “Children were divided into groups of 10 each and asked to list the effects of either drought,floods or heavy rain — depending on what they experienced — and present them before the audience.

Fourteen-year-old Riya narrates: “We lived on the roof of our house for a month till the Kosi flood receded. I still remember a villager screaming ‘paani aya,paani aya’. I went on the roof with my sister to check and saw the water level rising. Withing minutes the water had reached our doortsteps. My mother was downstairs and my father was at our fertilizer shop. I could meet him only after a week when he somehow managed to come home.”

Programme coordinator of HCDI D Kiran Babu said,“We plan to compile these narrations with details and suggest possible solutions and send it to the state and central government officials.” A copy will also go to Germany-based voluntary organisation Kindernothilfe,representatives of which will be carrying it to the Copenhagen conference on climate change in December. Similar workshops had been conducted in Nagpur and Varanasi as well.