Children's Movement for Civic Awareness (CMCA)

CMCA is an innovative programme designed to foster and nurture active citizenship in children, founded on the belief that children are powerful messengers of change. http://www.cmcaindia.org/
The CMCA had launched civic clubs in schools in Bangalore, Mysore, Hubli, Dharwad and Mumbai with the aim of making children aware of their civic responsibilities. The clubs reached out to more than 50,000 children and their families.
How does the CMCA work?
 "We visit schools regularly. Each school has a volunteer and the club meets once a week to encourage the leaders to conduct campaigns in their school campus through posters, assembly talks, and so on. In fact, one of our campaigns in a school has led to rainwater harvesting in the school auditorium. The topics that we cover during our club activities differ from school to school. For instance, in schools like Bishop Cottons or Baldwins, we teach them how to conserve water, how they should take immediate measures to repair leaks in taps. Whereas in government and corporation schools the focus is on how they have a right to drinking water as most schools do not have proper water and sanitation facility. Similarly in private schools the focus is how each one should segregate the garbage while for the other schools it is about the various impacts of the garbage on one's health. This creates awareness as most of these children live in slums and low cost homes that are not well planned," explains Priya K., a volunteer of CMCA in an interview with “The Hindu” newspaper.
The aim of Inspiration is to provide a platform to create awareness among the future citizens on civic and environmental issues.
Every year, CMCA selects a theme related to the environment or developing civic sense among the students. Based on the theme, CMCA conducts the following activities over a period of time: -    Survey -    Ripples of Awareness -    Jaatre (The Jaatre is an occasion to show case the achievements and activities of Civic Clubs to each other as well as the general public and other schools.)
Some of the remarkable activities accomplished by CMCA:

•  Year-long Water Awareness Activities

Target Group – Students from Classes 3rd, 4th, 5th and 8th from over 50 schools in Bangalore. Indirectly, it also targets the households from where these children come.
Why this Project?

1. For creating a critical mass of socially and environmentally sensitive young leaders and pioneers.
2. To spread awareness about water conservation among the students, and through them, the general public.

Activities Planned:

1. Organizing the civic club members, distributing water badges to them and orienting them and the volunteers about the theme of the year, i.e. water.
2. Conducting a survey on water literacy of people and the level of access, quality and consumption of water in Bangalore.
3. Giving each civic club member an Information / Awareness Sheet that contains civic messages on Water, the importance of being Water Disciplined and a Pledge. Members will get it signed from their parents.
4. Organizing Jaatre.

• Students to set clean boundary

Angered by what has become a daily sight of litter on footpaths and people urinating near their school, nearly 100 students in the VIII grade at Sacred Heart Girls' School planned a protest.
Nearly 80 of these students were active volunteers of the Children's Movement for Civic Awareness (CMCA). They put into practice the civic theory lessons learnt as part of the Acts of Active Citizenship program conducted by CMCA volunteers.

• Hubli dharwad municipal corporation (HDMC) roped in kids to spread civic awareness

Development activities on arterial roads may have changed the face of the twin cities of Hubli-Dharwad over the last two years. But it is still struggling to come out of its two major vices lack of civic sense and indifference to hygiene.
What repels one the most, is people using the roadsides as an open lavatory and spitting in public places. Two wheeler riders very often have to perform acrobatics to escape being showered by spittle from bus passengers, lorry drivers and other two-wheeler riders. Walls and banisters of government buildings are plastered with 'paan' stains to resemble a mosaic pattern.
Even the Hubli-Dharwad Municipal Corporation's effort to provide garbage bins at convenient points and regular cleaning of the streets have not done much good as any keen observer will find more garbage lying outside than inside the bins.
Keeping all these factors in view, the HDMC decided to initiate Children's Movement for Civic Awareness (CMCA) programmes to curb the malaise that is so deep rooted in society.
HDMC is offering monetary support to CMCA programmes.

• CMCA children observed Traffic Police Day in Bangalore

In a gesture of solidarity and good citizenship, the city observed Traffic Police Day in a unique way. Kudos to Children's Movement for Civic Awareness (CMCA) based in Koramangala, Bangalore. That day volunteers, along with children of 75 civic clubs from the Children's Movement for Civic Awareness, visited traffic junctions where policemen were on duty and gave them "Thank You" cards and roses for trying their best to make the roads safe for them.
Vrunda Bhaskar, Coordinator, CMCA, said: “CMCA aims to sensitise students and the citizens of Bangalore to the ordeals of the traffic police and the problems of traffic and road safety.  We hope to impress on our children and the public on the urgent need to follow traffic rules and be sensitive to the traffic constabulary.”
 
Additional Information provided on phone by Vrunda Bhaskar, National Co-ordinator of CMCA, Bangalore:
Recent activities of CMCA: CMCA generally slows down its activities after February because of exams. In recent activities...last Friday, they displayed a movie named 'chakachak' in some government schools. This movie is based on civic awareness. Adding more states in CMCA is under process. Vrunda herself talked to Delhi's CM, Smt. Sheila Dixit and she assured to add some 400 schools with CMCA. The process is under planning phase. Adding schools to CMCA: CMCA's volunteers contact the schools which are near to their places and tell them about CMCA. What all they need is school Principal's coordination/support, a 40 minutes period in a week and a teacher coordinator. Rest all the arranged by CMCA. CMCA generally do not ask for any kind of funds from Schools. Even for organizing field trips, CMCA hire buses and all.
Volunteering in CMCA: Those who wish to volunteer for CMCA, Bangalore, please visit http://www.cmcaindia.org/cgi-bin/index.cgi?site=bangalore&page=home or directly write to Vrunda at vrunda4@yahoo.com. A one hour orientation session is taken for new volunteers.
Funds: CMCA never ask for funds from schools (government as well as private). Generally corporates act as main source of funds for CMCA. "We have been working since almost 9 years and we are doing good. Arranging funds had never been a problem for us. We manage to get it somehow and things are going fine till now" says Ms. Bhaskar.
Adding more cities to CMCA: CMCA look for NGOs who can take up the responsibility of taking care of all the CMCA activities in schools of their city.