SALT LAKE ADDRESS: Project Green Light gets underway. Picture by Aranya Sen

Salt Lake will soon get a student council. To be formally launched on November 20, building awareness about child rights and making the township a more child-friendly place are to be its main action points.

Project Green Light involves Salt Lake School, Haryana Vidya Mandir, Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, St Francis Xavier, the Salt Lake campus of Apeejay School and the under-privileged children of Ahlladi, the cultural wing of NGO Prayasam. Conceived by Prayasam and Salt Lake School, students will start work with a script-writing workshop on August 10 and 11. The rights to survival, development, protection and participation are the themes to work on.

The inaugural day will also see a collaborative dance performance in Bhoomisuta. Choreographed by the Ahlladi kids with the help of Odissi dancer Sharmila Mukherjee, Salt Lake School students will be taken through the paces for a joint presentation.

“We have a period at the end of each day that is devoted to club activities. The kids from Prayasam will come and interact with our students during that time,” explains principal Swapna Dutta.

The students — mainly from classes IX and XI — are excited about working with the council and on related projects. “There are so many children in our country who don’t even get a chance to go to school. The best way to help them is by first learning about our own rights,” smiles Madhurilata Basu, Class XI (humanities).

She is looking forward to working with the Ahlladi members. “It will be a two-way process, where we each have something to learn from the other,” she adds. To get the process started, the school has taken a session on basic child rights, information that will come in handy when they will brainstorm for the scripts. The best four will be chosen, and celebrities are to be roped in for voice-overs, to accompany the dance.

By November, the students will also have to be prepared to launch a full-fledged child rights campaign, with a rally scheduled for the November 20 event as well. The council will then focus on building awareness through debates and public speaking. “Ideas and concerns raised by students will be taken up to see if action can be taken,” explain officials of Prayasam.

The council will also be entrusted with creating a child resource directory to list all possible contacts a kid may want — from emergency services to where guitar classes are available.