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Humanitarian Response-Joshimath

Key Initiatives or Changes:Joshimath is located in Zone V of India’s seismic zonation scheme, which denotes a high-risk area. More cracks appeared in buildings in the month of December 2022 and January 2023, where around 863 households were identified where the cracks have appeared and out of which 278 families were displaced to the safe places identified by DDMA. Many Anganwadi centres and Schools also fall in the unsafe wards.

Joshimath Land Subsidence Project signifies Bal Raksha Bharat implementation of humanitarian response which was not restricted to just distribution of the necessary materials. The project saw the upgradation from setting up of Child Friendly Space (CFS) to graduating to CFS cum TLC cum MAC center which were equipped with necessary educational resources to ensure that children and adolescents affected by the disaster can resume their education promptly. Bridge course was designed to guide dropout, never-enrolled, and irregular students towards embarking on an educational journey and towards successful mainstreaming them to formal education. Recreational activities tailored for children between the ages of 6 to 14, focusing on enhancing intellectual, creative and innovative abilities and fostering a positive learning environment. Since the nature of the disaster is recuring, we build the community understanding of the concept of PVCA, made them aware of the tools to be used in the community in case of any disaster like situation, and introduced the concept of Psychosocial support and familiarising of it within the community thereby increasing the community resilience to further disasters.

All the above-mentioned collaborative effort was a marked improvement that was hardly seen in any other disaster response.

Further, with the revoking of the FCRA licence and the subsequent challenges and BRB’s zeal to resolutely stand with the people of Joshimath in the time of grave crisis by overcoming all the challenges exemplifies BRB’s indomitable spirit thereby helping them to gain the goodwill, trust and faith of the people of Joshimath. It also paved the way to replicate the model of Joshimath in other disaster-prone area, thereby scaling our reach, impact and mission to reach to most vulnerable children and community.

Innovative Approaches or Strategies:

The strategies that were implemented in Joshimath were as follows:

Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) In Emergency: Creation of a cadre of trained ICDS functionaries across the project intervention on Ready to Learn (Save the Children Module) and Psychosocial First Aid to help children learn better at CFS and other Anganwadi Centers.

Education in Emergency (EiE): Providing uninterrupted education to the affected children by setting up of academic classes in CFSs.

Child Protection in Emergency: Development/Installation of Child Friendly Spaces/Anganwadi Centers by equipping them with innovative child-centric materials, creating an enabling environment and to facilitate Psychosocial First Aid support to encourage and facilitate children to cope with their mental situation including their family members.

Migrant families, in particular the Nepali Families who migrated to the city in search of daily wages and better livelihood opportunities faced the greatest challenges of providing quality education to the children. Their children, in particular, were often left unsupervised for the entire day while their parents worked. Many Nepali children never had the opportunity to enrol in schools or Anganwadi Centre due to various obstacles such as financial instability, lack of identification documents, language barriers, and social marginalization. The educational support provided through our Child-Friendly Spaces has enabled these children to access education, challenge societal norms and achieve age-appropriate learning level, thus helping in the BRB’s objective of creating an equitable society for all and fulfil our mission to reach to the very last child.

Measures of Success:

The project was able to achieve the following major milestone during the duration of the project;
Throughout the project, a total of 1390 children received assistance, gaining access to continued education and safe, child-friendly learning spaces through the Education in Emergency (EiE) approach, alongside psychological first aid support.

Through the project, we also reached 650 Household aiming to enhance resilience and provide children in the community with a safe and healthy environment for growth, thereby mitigating the ongoing impact of the disaster.
An initiative to strengthen Anganwadi Workers (AWWs) in Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) during emergencies was undertaken, involving the training of 42 Anganwadi workers. These workers subsequently implemented ECCE practices with children on the ground.

The emotional distress triggered by disastrous situations significantly impacts various aspects of individuals’ lives, including occupation, interpersonal relationships, and physical health. Bal Raksha Bharat intervened with Psychological First Aid in disaster-affected areas of Joshimath, reaching out to 1294 children to assess their support need

PVCA exercise has been completed in all 11 identified communities of our project intervention area. The exercise increased the resilience of the community to address any disaster situation through a collaborative effort, as well as ensure community involvement to reduce vulnerability to disasters to diagnose capacities and vulnerabilities. Family Preparedness Exercise has been completed with 650 families to enhance the capacity of families to reduce disaster risk by increasing awareness, and knowledge and collaborating on family emergency planning at the grassroots level.

85 women have been trained and equipped with the soft skills and other hardware material required to start their enterprise. (start-up).

57 individuals were trained as first responders to manage any disaster situation through task force training conducted on Early Warning, First Aid, Search and Rescue, Shelter Management, and Psycho-social Support.

The positive impact of the project can be very well gauged from the fact that the Joshimath Response which started with 4 CFSs (confined only to Joshimath Town) gradually grew to 8 CFSs in Joshimath and other villages ( with one CFs being set at 180 km from Joshimath town) in a span of 6 month on the request of the Department of Education on seeing the positive changes which were observed in the child who were engaged in the various response activities held in CFS. The Child Friendly Space (CFS) developed is providing a platform in the project intervention area for younger children (3–6-year-old) and children (6-14-year-old) to help in the holistic development of the child and bridge any academic gap that may have been created due to the land subsidence event through providing bridge course to them.

The project has raised awareness among the members of the ICDS staff on various types of disasters, and risks along with the ways to tackle such situation which would directly increase their understanding of disasters and their ability to implement preparedness measures. This in turn will help both children and adults in the project intervention area and communities

One of the biggest achievement and impact of the project is the effort to bring the most marginalized community in Joshimath such as the Nepali Community, into mainstream society thereby breaking the prejudices and stigma associated with these communities. The project has successfully mainstreamed 5 Nepali Children to formal education and increased awareness among the other members of the Nepali community on Child Rights and Child Protection