Nishant Gokhale and Lina Khan
The Adivasi Academy received two excellent American India Foundation’s Clinton Fellows
during 2017 and 2018. Lina Khan, having a Bachelors in Linguistics followed by a
Masters in Public Policy and with experience in Program Monitoring and Evaluation,
Lina spent an year at Tejgadh studying Vasantshala’s Mother Tongue and Multilingual
Program and looking at the effectiveness of the Pictorial Glossary for primary learners.
Having an LL.B (Hons.) from the West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences,
Kolkata from Calcutta University and having thereafter pursued his Masters at the
Harvard Law School, Nishant took up the Adivasi Academy’s Library as his focal point
of study. During his year’s stay, Nishant prepared an extensive report on strengths
and limitations of the library and a future path for its development so that it
can become a resource in the area of Tribal Studies for scholars but also be a knowledge
bank for the community in the area. While at the Academy, Nishant also prepared
a detailed Bibliography of a 1000+ titles of published books on the Customary Laws
of Tribal Communities in India.
UNICEF
Bhasha had a five year long partnership with UNICEF from 2014 to 2019 for institutionalising
mechanisms and empowering all stakeholders to create a secure and child-friendly
environment for children in the Chhotaudepur district. Starting with 121 villages
of Kanwant taluka, Bhasha began with forming community-based committees as School
Management Committees, Adoloscent Groups, Child Protection Committees and went on
to build their capacities for strengthening Child Protection governance and delivery.
Village Child Protection Plans were prepared and implemented with community participation.
In order to institutionalise the structures as well as systems and processes for
effective Child Protection, Bhasha with UNICEF, extended the work to all talukas
of Chhotaudepur district and established CAARCs (Child and Adolescent Resource Centres)
at each of the Jan Seva Kendras in the talukas. For an year, the CAARCs served as
a single-window system to reach out existing government schemes to the citizens
in the area and through their outreach activities, created much needed awareness
regarding Child Protection in all blocks of Chhotaudepur district.