Eliminate child poverty rally organized at University College Miranpur
Gurjit Singh/ royalpatiala.in/ Patiala
Child poverty is a kind of violence. Every allegedly poor child has a fundamental right to be physically, mentally, spiritually, morally and socially developing. These words were conveyed by the Convener of the Religious Studies Forum Dr. Tejinder Pal Singh at University College, Miranpur. He said that IDEP (The International Day for the Eradication of Poverty) is celebrated every year world wide as International Day for the Elimination of Poverty. Keeping this in view, the NSS unit’s program officer Dr. Manpreet Kaur and Dr. Tejinder Pal Singh organized a huge rally from college to Devigarh.
In this rally, the students raised awareness of the issue while chanting slogans of ‘Eliminate child poverty’ and collectively committed to eliminating child poverty. About 70 volunteers from the college’s NSS unit participated in the rally. On this occasion, Dr. Tejinder Pal Singh addressing the students, said that today’s rally is dedicated to the 30th anniversary of ‘Convention on the Rights of the Child’. He said that today, while we are organizing various ceremonies in view of the 550th centenary of Sri Guru Nanak Dev Ji, on this occasion we shoud implement the principle of ‘Vand Chako’, laid down by Guru Sahib. Dr. Singh added it should be implemented at the practical level to eliminate children’s poverty.
On this occasion the Program Officer Dr. Manpreet Kaur presented the statistics on the effects of child poverty, saying that 3.4 million people, most of them children, die due to poor water facilities every year, 3.1 million children die of malnutrition and 640 million childern lose their lives due to lack of resources. He said that we should work jointly with the governments to end child poverty so that innocent children do not die. The highlight of the rally was that the Convener of the Religious Studies Forum, Dr. Tejinder Pal Singh, on this occasion, announced to open a food bank at the college to ensure help to poor families. At the same time, he asked to adopt five poor children from five villages, who promised to cover the entire expenditure from school level to higher education. The college in-charge Prof. Appreciating the announcements, Gurwinder Kaur informed the students about the activities being undertaken by the NSS unit. Prof. Inderjit Singh, Mr. Jaspal Singh and Dr. Harjit Kaur etc. was present.
