Bhubaneswar: June 17: A ray of hope comes in the form of an initiative taken by the Scheduled Tribe and Scheduled Caste Development Department in association with the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), for the students residing in hostels especially the tribal’s whose lives are always at risk. The purpose of this initiative is to conduct life skill education program in residential schools for proper safety and well-being of students.
Recently, the department approved the hiring of 3000 Matrons in schools to ensure availability of lady attendants for schools in the tribal residential hostels. Along with that ‘Zero-Tolerance’ policy is to be adopted by the department towards situation of abuse and harassment on students in school, remarked by Prof (Dr) A.B. Ota, Commissioner-Cum-Director SCSTRTI (SC & ST Research & Training Institute). A step longed for imparting knowledge for not only improving the health and hygiene and wellbeing-responsible behavior of the adolescents but also to inculcate better social, communication and negotiation skills among the pupils. Earlier this department had also trained 350 teachers on life skills education. The first batch of training was completed on 8th June, where sixty seven matrons from tribal residential high schools of Kalahandi, Nabarangapur and Mayurbhanj were trained in a three days program. Post its success it’s decided that around 250 matrons of high schools will be trained in the first phase during the month of June 2016. Lastly, The SCSTRTI plans to impart similar training to around 1200 additional matrons during 2016-2017.
