Focus group discussion by Child Friendly Smart City at UME School.

Focus group discussion by Child Friendly Smart City at UME School.

Child friendly smart city knowledge centre, Surat is a joint initiative of UNICEF and SMC, Surat. It organized Focus Group Discussion (FGD) at UME School, Limbayat, Surat on 19^th Oct, 2019, Saturday. It was during 4 to 6 o clock. That session was based on interaction and activities. It had clear objectives of making awareness about health, safety, and education among the school children. It was handled by Ms. Hinal Gor, Miss Tanvi Sanghvi, and Mr. Pragnesh Gamit. For that they selected 15 students in order to bring interaction and openness.

                 At first Hinal Ma’am started with basic questions whether they liked to go hospital and what the health was. The children replied quickly about their eating habits and living style. So they didn’t like to go the hospital. Further she asked them which people didn’t go to hospital. They answered that the people ate healthy foods and cared the body. Such people didn’t go to the hospitals. She shot such several questions to them on eating and living habits. In that way she engaged them mentally and thoughtfully.

               At a same time the children were seen happy and excited while interacting with her. Then Tanvi Ma’am took the session by shooting the question on which place of city they felt safe. She called them one by one to stick a sticker on the map of Surat city where they felt safe and had security. That put them to imagine and have a scope of decision making. They immensely enjoyed it and later were given a form on questions of health and safety based to select better option. In that way they got a chance of developing the thinking. The whole session was based on life skill and practical approach. So everybody including Hinal Ma’am and her team were lost in it. That was a result of the session.

 At the end they were given a gift of colourful pen and a packet of snack. They ate it. The team of Child friendly city along with the school teachers had a cup of coffee. Mr. Bahauddin Shaikh and Ms. Jasmin Patel extended a vote of thank to them

Throughout the session, it was observed that the children liked the questions related their health, lifestyle, and safety based. Even they looked happy, thoughtful, and excited. During 2 hours they didn’t ask for anything else or drinking water due to effect of the interaction and activities by team of Child friendly city. The success of the session goes to Hinal Gor, Tanvi, and Pragnesh sir. The actual idea was planned by Mr. Anuj Ghanekar who is an executive officer of this child friendly city. At the last moment he got an urgent work, so he could not turn up there. But his planning was successfully implemented by his team. Mr. Afroz Khan, the visionary man of the school, made that possible by inviting the team of child friendly smart city, Surat. In the end, it really looked child friendly school.