Welcome to Clearing The Haze – Making the invisible visible, a podcast show that discusses topics that are usually invisible or just hazy. Hosted by Shachi Irde.

Shachi wears many hats and is passionate about inclusion. She is an industry recognized speaker on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion and women in the workplace related topics. She has been recognized by numerous industry forums and has been recipient of “Iconic woman in leadership” award by All Women Economic Forum.

Our topic for today – Child Rights and Protection.

Our guests for this discussion are – Anson P D Alexander and Shoba Koshy.

Anson is the director and co-founder of Kanal Innovations, an NGO in Kerala, India that works exclusively for the empowerment of children. Their mission is to help children to inspire hope; ignite imagination and aspire dreams.

Shoba was the Chief Postmaster general, Kerala Postal Circle from 2009, till retirement in 2013. Post retirement, she was appointed Chairperson, the Kerala State Commission for Protection of Child Rights from March 2015 to March 2018. She was awarded the first Rani Laxmibai Award for excellence in Public Administration instituted by the Kerala Government in 2014.

Podcast Summary: Child Rights and Protection

Host: Shachi Irde

00:00: Introduction
01:29: Anson, can you share with us the areas of work your organisation is involved in?
03:06: Shoba – Share with us your experience as a woman leader when policies and society outlook was not as forward looking as it is today.
08:07: What are the primary objectives of the Child rights Commission?
10:26: With strides in technology, education and awareness about prevention of child marriages have you seen change happening at the grass root levels?
13:22: What role does the child rights commission play in prevention of child marriages?
22:39: How do you go about designing awareness programs?
23:50: Can you share your approach to build awareness around child abuse / inappropriate touch?
28:30: Access to online classes is not available to most of them in the villages or socio economically poor. Will it lead to dropouts and increase the illiteracy rate thus creating cycle of poverty and wiping away years of efforts?
31:01: What would your advice be to children and parents in an unfortunate incident where the child is victim of cyber bullying?
37:47: Would you like to share any message for our listeners?
38:43: Conclusion. Outro.