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Rural children get access to newspapers and radio
Opening up a new world
By Ishani Ranasinghe
In rural Sri Lanka, many children would have rarely or never had the opportunity to read a newspaper or a book, something so many of us take for granted. The wealth of knowledge this denies them as they try to further their education is indeed a major drawback.

Over the past few years, however, Plan International which has many projects for children has attempted to remedy this. Plan's goal is to provide access to a child-friendly publication and to provide opportunities for them to get involved in the publishing process.

"I think these two projects can be taken as a classic example for good governance," says Dharshini Samaranayaka, Research and Evaluation Manager of Plan Sri Lanka.

Child sponsorship being the basic foundation of the organisation, Plan Sri Lanka conducts its work under four programmes; children's well- being, children's future, children's integration and parents supporting children. Working in eight districts, Plan helps over 20,000 children, their families and communities.

An international humanitarian, child focused development organisation without religious, political or government affiliation, Plan International began working in Sri Lanka in 1981 on the invitation of the Government of Sri Lanka Plan now has programme units in Hambantota, Wellawaya, Minipe, Polpitigama, Kandy, Monaragala, Rideemaliyadda, Passara and Matale.

With many projects being implemented throughout the year, Plan Sri Lanka has also tied up with the private and the government sector to give children more opportunities, education-wise.

For the past four years, under the Child Protection and Participation Programme, Plan has been distributing two weekly children's newspapers, 'Wijeya' and 'Wijei' to selected schools in the district where Plan is active. "Currently over 35,000 children in 201 schools receive a newspaper," says Ms. Samaranayaka.

'Wijeya' and 'Wijei' are both children's weeklies carrying interestingly presented information about Sri Lanka and the world, about arts, science, sports and nature. These newspapers also contain four-page supplements open for contributions by children from Plan's work areas.

"The reason these papers were chosen was because we felt that the contents of the paper complement the school curriculum, offering features and articles, space for creative writing, children's news, current affairs and local knowledge," Ms. Samaranayake adds.

Distributed to the children through the schools, the paper is provided to the children with the aim of improving their reading habits and their access to supplementary educational information. Since the distribution process is done through the school, children between 10-18 years (the target readership of the paper) each receive their own copy.

With the aim of making children understand the concept of media, Mass Media is now a subject at O’Ls. There are plans to introduce it to the A’L stream as well. Plan Sri Lanka has taken steps to foster the children’s understanding of this subject by strengthening the media clubs in schools.

For keen contributors to the children's page of 'Wijeya', Plan together with Wijeya and the National Institute of Education (NIE) have been holding central and decentralised workshops. "Wijeya provides the needed wealth of knowledge, while the government gives the technical capacity," says Ms. Samaranayaka.

Working with the NIE also gives them the necessary authority to contact the schools and go into training the children while "Plan gives the needed resources." All of this helps these students gain the knowledge and skill to improve their media clubs.

At these clubs, children are given a basic training in announcing, writing etc. Working with Rajarata FM the children are now putting to good use what they have learnt. Every Monday from 4.00 p.m. to 5.00 p.m. will be their time to shine as they take the airwaves with children's programmes. "Coming to you on Rajarata FM (104.2 FM) the show will feature children’s activities, drama, introducing children with special talents etc.

The most heartening factor of the Plan projects is that underprivileged children are given an opportunity to progress with their education. "Developing education is one of our concepts at Plan," affirms Ms. Samaranayaka.

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