Projects and Activities

PROJECTS & ACTIVITIES (2022-2023)

•Child Protection Project (Supported By: Azim Premzi Foundation)

We protect women and children from abuse, neglect, exploitation and violence in our working areas. Our programs focus on the most vulnerable women and children while aiming for the safety and well-being of all women and children. We believe every child deserves a future and we give children a healthy start in life, the opportunity to learn and protection from harm. We protect children from abuse, neglect, exploitation, and violence in our working area. Community based protection mechanisms will be in place to stop trafficking of children for domestic work, marriage, abuse or other hazardous occupations and make child domestic work socially and culturally unacceptable through practical means (models of best practices) by which child domestic work can be successfully reduced and gradually abolished in the high endemic districts of West Bengal, India.

•North 24 Parganas District Childline Project (Supported by: Childline India Foundation)
Being a partner of a 24 hour national free emergency phone outreach service like Childline, members of Childline team of Dhagagia Social welfare society works not only providing emergency support to children in need of care and protection on a 24*7 basis but also their had some other functioning like outreach and awareness generating programme regarding Child rights, Childline and its activity.

•Babughat Bus Stand (Kolkata) Childline Project (Supported by: Childline India Foundation)

Dhagagia Social welfare society works as NGO partner with Childline Indian Foundation for Kolkata Babughat Bus Stand. It works as Collaborating organization in this district. It directly looks after Babughat Bus Stand area. Presently there are all total twelve members working in this Childline project. One Coordinator, one counselor, seven team member and three volunteer. Being a partner of a 24 hour national free emergency phone outreach service like Childline, members of Childline team of Dhagagia Social welfare society works not only providing emergency support to children in need of care and protection on a 24*7 basis but also their had some other functioning like outreach and awareness generating programme regarding Child rights, Childline and its activity. Babughat Childline team trying to generates awareness to Bus Stand area by this outreach and awareness, generating programme. Babught team handled 318 cases in this year.

•Mother & Child Health Project (Supported By: HI-TECH Infra)
The purpose of this project was to reduce cases of malnutrition among children below 5 years of age in the project area in Sundarbans. The health seeking behaviour and practices of the community members were addressed through various activities at local level and by facilitating their active participation in the planning, implementation and review of this process. The strategy of the intervention was also include water, sanitation and hygiene issues. Concerted efforts were made to support the Government system through training and consultations and strengthen quality of service delivery and mechanisms. Moreover, regularizing community level meetings on hygiene and sanitation in collaboration with PRI were also contribute to system strengthening. DSWS worked with the PRI and Health Services aiming to make these as mainstream agenda of the local governance system. Stronger linkages was established with services of Government Departments like Department of Sundarban Affairs, Department of Child Development, Women Development and Social Welfare, Public Health Engineering Department etc.

•Education Project  (Supported By: RIBLAM)

DSWS based in Sundarban, envisions to ensure quality education for all children from under resourced and at risk sections of society. Through its various action research initiatives in pedagogy, curriculum development, teacher development program, children supplementary learning centers and child protection, DSWS has spread its work not only in West Bengal but also in Jharkhand.

•Wash Project  ( Panchayat & Rural Development Department, Govt. of WB)
Swachh Bharat Mission India IHHL scheme aims to make India an open defecation free country in 5 years. IHHL Application is a massive program for constructing private toilets in urban and rural areas. Construction of individual household toilets is going on rapidly in 4401 towns and several rural areas of . Under , Central and State governments are providing financial assistance in the construction of household toilets. We got a support from Panchayat and Rural Development Department (Govt. of West Bengal) for Construction of individual household toilets for 572 poor families in Sarberia Agarhati Gram Panchayat of Sandeshkhali Block-I under North 24 Parganas district. We completed successfully this program. We conducted many sensitization program on WASH in Sandeshkhali Block-I

•Livelihood Project (Supported By: Sustain Plus)

DSWS has the advantage of a strong community level presence in working area from 1994 and enjoy a good rapport with the parents, local government, teachers, youth, women artisans and children there.
At the same time DSWS has strong networks with the administrative departments at all levels (Village level, GP level, Block level, District level and State level) and also strong networks with the 46 women SHGs who are involve in our existing production/Training centre. 258 women artisans got agriculture training. They established mangrove nursey and they planted 12 lakhs mangrove plants in river embankment of Sundarban. They are selling their products (plants) from nursery to Governments and NGOs.

DSWS has strong network with local government, PRIs, Govt. departments like District Administration viz. District Rural Development Cell, District Industries Centre, Department of Women   &   Child   Development   and   Social   Welfare,   Regional Director, Eastern Regional Office, O/o Development Commissioner (Handicrafts), Kolkata, PBSSD,  MSME  Department  ,Private  sector  like  Bandhan  Creations, NABARD, State Bank of India etc. for livelihood generation programmes. In addition to that local youth clubs, Mahila Mandals / Samity are also associated with DSWS. Regular contacts with new buyers are gradually increasing.

•Environment and Climate change project (Supported By: Tellus Carbon)

Mangrove plantation and strengthened embankment of river was main objectives in this year. We sensitized above 25000 villagers on environment and climate change in this year.
The SHGs in Mithakhali, Monipur, Atapur, Purba Atapur will work in raising the mangrove samplings for the plantation work. All the SHGs in these villages were identified. We required to contract with 15 SHGs to raise 6 lakhs of mangrove saplings. They are the leading stakeholder in raising the saplings and protecting the plantation plots. We selected 15 SHGs from the enlisted SHGs as per the given below criteria:
•Have prior experience of raising mangrove nurseries or familiar with the work
•Have bank account and other books of records updated
•Agree to protect the mangrove sites at least three years after the plantation
•The SHG must be constituted with female members
•Priority will be given to the vulnerable women groups
•The SHGs which members are residing beside the rivers must be prioritized


•Women Empowerment Project (Supported By: HI-TECH Infra
Woman SHG formation and strengthening is our main objectives in this year through livelihood program and gender equity program. 


CHILDLINE PROJECT

Dhagagia Social welfare society works as NGO partner with Childline Indian Foundation for North 24 Parganas District. It works as Collaborating organization in this district. It directly looks after 6 Blocks of this district namely Barasat-I &II, Barrackpore-I&II, Amdanga and Rajarhat. 
Presently there are all total nine members working in this Childline project. One Coordinator, one counselor, six team member and one volunteer. 
Being a partner of a 24 hour national free emergency phone outreach service like Childline, members of Childline team of Dhagagia Social welfare society works not only providing emergency support to children in need of care and protection on a 24*7 basis but also their had some other functioning like outreach and awareness generating program regarding Child rights, Childline and its activity. 

Strengthening structures & systems :

• Formation & strengthening Child Protection Committees (CPCs) and Children Groups (CGs): The Community Based Child Protection Model focuses on the development of two community groups in each village:
• CPCs comprising 10 - 15 influential adults of the village – teachers, religious leaders, panchayat members, ASHA or ICDS workers,or simply proactive individuals who take an interest in the village affairs including children’s issues.
• Children’s Group comprising of 15 – 20 children –members could be school-going or out-of-school children, children who have been rescued from trafficking situations or other situations, the only criteria being that they be between the ages of 14-18 and have leadership qualities.
  Two members of the Children’s group are de facto members of the Child Protection Committee. Jointly and separately, the two groups perform child protection activities, including enhancing awareness about the dangers of unsafe migration, child labour and child marriages, identifying missing children in the community, investigating their absence, informing the police,forming a rescue team, conducting the rescue and dealing with perpetrators like marriage brokers and traffickers. Most importantly, they take the responsibility of integrating the child back into the family and community.
• Village, block and district consultation: Village, block and district level consultations involve participants from relevant level of duty bearers in public speeches and discussion about CDW issues in their particular village, block and district.Consultations creates platform to generate a consensus on the issue of CDW and create plan of action for the area.  At each consolation recommendations are agreed upon and these are carried forward to the district or state level consultation by members who are common between the different levels. 
• Sensitization of Panchayat & block level officials:  Prior to the initiative on CDW the duty-bearers were unaware of the dangers of CDW and many believed the practice helped poor children and their families. Save the Children and DSWS provided series of sensitization trainings which enhanced government duty-bearers understanding of the dangers of CDW and children’s needs.  Sensitization includes one to one counselling and group discussions between DSWS workers and government members, repatriated children and their parents interacting with government members and sharing their experiences of CDW, conducting lectures and presenting research findings, statistics, live case studies and newspaper clippings to illustrate the abuse and exploitation faced by CDWs. Duty-bearers have utilized their sensitization training by creating child friendly spaces and a better environments for children in their villages and aiming to secure quality education and positive learning environments for children.