A Time to Look Back, and Ahead

What was 2016 like for children and young adults? From a global report to a national plan, from events like the US elections to the Olympics, we examine the year with a lens of a young person...

There was a report ... and there is a plan

And in between and amidst them lies the real tale. We begin with two things which happened in 2016 that had a direct bearing on children and young adults. The first of these was the State of the World’s Children, a flagship publication of the United Nations Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF). The 2016 report was released on 28 June 2016, and it paints a rather bleak picture of the conditions children are living in the world over.

The state of our children: the darker side backed by data, the report argues that unless the process of reaching out to millions of marginalized and vulnerable children is accelerated, their future will be in deep trouble. Let’s take a look at some statistics:

• About 70 million children are already in danger of dying before reaching their fifth birthday.
• In sub-Saharan Africa, children are 10 times more likely to die before reaching their fifth birthday than children in high income countries.
• Sub-Saharan Africa is home to nine out of 10 children living in extreme poverty.
• More than 60 million children who would otherwise be eligible for primary school, will have no access to schools or any kind of formal education.
• The number of children who do not attend school has increased since 2011.
• About 124 million children today do not go to primary and lower-secondary school.
• A significant proportion of those who go to school are not learning. Almost two out of five who do finish primary school, have not learned how to read, write or do simple arithmetic.

But there are a few bright spots

• Since 1990, the number of children who die before they reach five years of age has come down by over 50 per cent.
• More girls are getting access to education. Girls now equal the number of boys attending primary school in 129 countries.
• Only 50 per cent of the number of people who lived in extreme poverty in the 1990s, continue to do so.

The report points that investing in the most vulnerable children can yield immediate and long-term benefits. For example, cash transfers have been shown to help children stay in school longer and advance to higher levels of education. The nation benefits as well—for each additional year of schooling completed, on an average, by young adults, the country’s poverty rate falls by 9 per cent, says the report.

Torn asunder: Children of strife

Years of war in Syria and Iraq have affected most the group which is least responsible for it—children. In 2016, the image of five-year-old Omran Daqneesh sitting in a daze on a hospital bed in Aleppo with his head smeared in blood and dirt shook the world and highlighted the plight of children caught in this horrible war. Some statistics from the year:

• 7.5 million Syrian children affected—equal to the population of the entire state of Washington in the US
• 2 million children cannot go to school
• Nearly 50 per cent of Syrian people have fled their homes since 2011. On an average, 100 Syrians flee every hour
• 13.5 million Syrians in need of humanitarian aid

The coming of Trump: No kid’s play

Has the coming of Donald J Trump to power in the US had any impact on children? Trump’s election campaign had been marred by persistent and widespread use of hateful speech against immigrants, non-whites and women. The effect this might have had on American children has been studied and widely reported.

Experts are of the opinion that Trump’s presidential campaign had an adverse effect on the mental health and well-being of children. His win, despite the use of such explicit and abusive language, is worrying child psychologists, teachers and parents. Children have been exposed to new forms of violence and abuse. White male American children have been offered the impression that it is okay to abuse other races because they are in a minority. Women and minority children are now fearful that the society might degenerate into one which promotes the idea of “might is right”.

What about India?

According to the report, India, with 17 per cent share, will lead the five countries accounting for more than half of the global burden of underfive deaths. The other nations in this list of the worst cases are Nigeria, Pakistan, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Angola, in that order. Being born into the poorest households carries a learning ‘penalty’: children from these households find education an uphill task. In the 7–11 age group, the report points out, there is a 19 per cent gap between poor and rich students in their ability to subtract. By age 11, children who come from the richest homes and have educated parents enjoy a huge academic advantage over others.

A National Action Plan

In 2016, India took notice of its children by bringing into force a new national plan for them. The country had framed its National Action Plan for Children in 2005. The plan had aimed at improving the condition of children according to four key parameters–survival, development, protection and participation of children. The plan, obviously, did not do much to fulfil that aim.

Child labour continued with impunity. Infant mortality rate could not be reduced to 30 or less—a goal of the plan—per 1,000 live births. Maternal mortality rate of 100 or less per 100,000 live births, another goal, remained unfulfilled as well. Many other goals such as 100 per cent coverage for rural sanitation, universalisation of early childhood care and education services and elementary education also remained unachieved.

The National Plan of Action for Children (NPAC), 2016, which has now replaced the 2005 plan, has been drafted by the Ministry of Women and Child Development. It is expected to carry forward the goals of the previous plan for a period of five years.

The NPAC identifies four key priority areas:

1. Survival
2. Health and nutrition
3. Education and development
4. Protection and participation

Some of the priority actions that the NPAC wants to do immediately are ensuring registration of birth of all children, reducing early marriage among girls, and the use of social media platforms to generate awareness on internet safety.

It is high time we took these aims and actions seriously; otherwise, all we might end up doing is looking at another national action plan 10 years from now!

DEMONITIZATION AND THE PIGGY BANKS

At 8:15 pm on 8 November 2016, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a ban on all notes of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 denomination. He explained that this was done to curb the twin menace of ‘black money’ and fake currency.

While this sudden move put the nation and its economy into a major tailspin, one leading national daily took a peek at what was happening to children because of this. Parents, frantic in search of smaller denomination notes and loose change, have raided their kids’ piggy banks! Children who had been saving up for something they wanted, have had to see all those small notes and coins get gobbled up by household expenses.

Mr Modi’s move has given a push, although a rude one, to India’s move towards a cashless economy. It remains to be seen whether a move which has caused such huge inconvenience all around manages to curb black money and usher in a new digital era, as the government promises it will.

When Imagination Soared And Ideas Rained Down...

Get a taste of some of the most interesting innovations of the year gone by

YIBU: For a feel of the real thing

Pronounced ‘ee-boo’, and meaning ‘first step’ in Mandarin, Yibu is a novel gaming platform that brings together and mixes old fashioned physical toys with a smartphone or tablet app. Children today spend more time staring at a screen than they do playing outside or with physical toys.

According to Frog, the global design firm which created Yibu, the gaming platform attempts to combine the addictive nature of online games with traditional toys. How does it do that? Well, Yibu comes with five crafted wooden toys, each embedded with sensors. Each toy has a different focus–sound, direction, temperature, light and rotation. The game also has an onscreen character, a polar bear. Making changes to the toys directly affects the bear. For example, if the game is taken outside into the sun, the bear starts sweating—to help the bear, you can either blow on the temperature sensor or move the light sensor to a shady spot!

The sensing toys also gather real-time environmental and weather information with a help of server and project it on the screen. For instance, it can reflect things like air quality and weather changes—if it rains in the real world, it begins to rain in the bear’s virtual world as well. In this manner, you can figure out how such changes might affect a character like the bear in the real world.

GREENPOCKET: A race to save energy?

Most of us reading this believe in doing our bit to save energy. We fret over lights and fans kept turned on. We vociferously support all public efforts to save energy. We are even ready to invest in various forms of alternative energy. But doing all this, in the confines of our homes, might seem like a thankless task at times. GreenPocket, a smartphone app from Germany, makes this entire enterprise a bit more fun–by turning energy saving into a competition among friends and acquaintances.

What this innovative app does is to enable Facebook users to share and compare their energy consumption statistics with their online contacts. The app generates weekly energy efficiency contests, and can notify how badly or well the contestants are doing.