Anurag Robert Kujur

The Change Makers Sumit 1st from right leading Children’s Club meeting Sumit Kumar, a student of BA-I comes from a poor family in one of the target community ‘Takthroja’ of Nalanda Area Programme. His father Anurodh Prasad is a daily wage earner and his mother Sona devi is a housewife. Sumit got registered in World Vision’s sponsorship programme in the year 2010. It was one of the newly added communities and the programmes were new for the community. During that time many of the social evils like child marriage were very much prevalent in these communities. The parents used to get their children married at an early age of 14 – 16 specially the girls. The girl children were seen as a burden and the parents wanted to get rid of them as early as possible. World Vision’s programmes like Children Club, LSTD etc. on Child Rights were conducted to make the children aware of their rights. Sumit attended these programmes conducted by World Vision and learnt about his rights and moral values. He was also the member of the Children Club and participated regularly. He learnt how the social evils like early marriage impacting the lives of the children which were causing the children to leave their studies and be dropped out of the school. In the year 2017 “Sankalp Children Club” was formed and Sumit was elected Secretary of the club. In 2019 he came to know about the marriage of two of his class/village mates Pinky and Chunnu who were 16 years of age. As he had learnt about the evils of early marriage he went to talk to their parents. In his first visit their parents were not much convinced due to family conditions. The children club team led by Sumit did not lose hope and visited them again and again and talked about the after effect of early marriage and urged them to let Pinky and Chunnu study further. Sumit’s visit were fruitful and their parents agreed not to get Pinky and Chunnu marry and let them study further. Today Pinky and Chunnu are continuing their studies and are studying in BA-I. Sumit is very glad that he was able to stop the early marriage of two of his friends. He wants to become a teacher and serve the community. His vision for his community is “Samuday – hamara baal vivah, baal majduri, baal soosan se mukt evam sashakt ho” (my community empowered and free from child marriage, child labour and child abuse). Children like Sumit are the change makers says, “Even if World Vision is not there I will continue to hold on to what I have learnt and continue to bring change in the community. I thank World Vision for giving me such Sumit 1st from right along with his friends opportunities to learn about my rights and help others too”.