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\ Advocacy and Research Centre(ARC)
 Parallel, and essential to the forward looking vision of the Butterflies
programme, is a strong, centralized advocacy and research component, that
links to lessons learned from the field based interventions, research and
alliances. The Advocacy and Research Centre (ARC) is a
unit of Butterflies that undertakes research and documentation to support
not only advocacy but also facilitate action on issues of Child Rights.
Realizing the importance of advocacy, research and documentation, ARC has
been involved in doing relevant research in areas of child rights violations
and child development, is also responsible for collection of relevant data
on children as well as documentation and analysis. On a regular basis, ARC
brings out advocacy materials on Child Rights, including a series of Comic
books. Its mandate is that of specific evidence based research, which will
lead to action on cases of child rights violations.
Through critiquing governments policies and programmes, the centre has
been untiringly striving to create awareness & advocate about child rights
not merely in Delhi but at the national and international level as well. It
works towards initiating public discourse on issues related to children and
acts as a consultancy with respect to other organizations working in the
field of child rights.The relevance of the Centre has been recognized by
the numerous requests from government departments, researchers and training
institutes for data and documents.
The focus of advocacy is on partnering with key ministries within
central government and also with different partners including media. The thrust is on
accelerating collaborative efforts among national and international based
NGOs, the international community and professional organizations, to
contribute towards creating an environment where innovative ideas can be
transformed into reality.
Research and Documentation
In keeping with the principles of the organization as a whole, ARC
seeks the participation of children to carry out research through
tailor made research design and tools of data collection.Children associated with Butterflies have conducted excellent
research on the girl child and Convention on the Rights of the Child and
prepared a report based on inputs from children in the form of drawings,
short stories and through recorded interviews.
Research and Documentation, an integral part of our programme:
● is directed towards
strengthening the knowledge base on the issue of child protection,
survival and development
● develops evidence based
advocacy strategies
● guiding and developing the
Butterflies Programme through Action Research
● advocating and initiating public
discourse on issues relating to Child Rights, survival and development
● functioning as a Resource
centre for Government, Voluntary Development Organizations, Academic Institutions, individuals,
researchers and public on
children
 Annual Lecture Series :
First Call for Children
As part of our efforts in advocacy and social mobilization for getting
children and their issues higher up on the agenda of civil society, we
started an Annual Lecture Series called First Call for Children
in 2003. This lecture series is a regular and important part of our
advocacy and is organized every year on 30th September.Our experience
has been that children are still being seen as recipients of welfare
and charity and not as equal citizens having their own human rights.
The question of rights of children in the modern times has emerged as
one of the most vibrant issues in the contemporary human rights
discussion. National and international initiatives have been underway
to understand and provide solutions with far reaching affects.
However, the fact remains that children remain a part of the
disadvantaged minority group even today as far as realization of human
rights and social justice are concerned. This is primarily because
children are generally, physically, mentally and economically
defenseless. Marginalization takes a much worse turn when the
vulnerable child receives unsatisfactory parenting, neglect by the
society and crimes being perpetrated against them all ultimately
violating their human right. The situation of children, particularly
of those who are vulnerable and come from marginalized communities,
needs to be addressed beyond the responses of welfare. We have to
locate children and their issues within a broader socio economic
systems and the dimensions of poverty. The lecture series are expected
to take the discourse on children up to that level.
To analyse the factors that contribute and amplify in making the laws
ineffectual, the consequent impact that they have on children and the
measures one could adopt to lessen the blow, Butterflies, in its Annual
Lecture Series, 2006, had addressed the issue of ‘Judiciary and Children’.
This was held on 30th September at the India Habitat Centre, New
Delhi. The keynote address was given by Justice V. Bhaskar Rao, Member
National Human Rights Commission. The other speakers were Dr. Achal Bhagat,
Ms. Aparna Bhatt and Mr. Gautam Navlakha.
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