Odisha girl in race for International kids peace prize

BHUBANESWAR: Subhasmita Tripathy, a 13-year-old girl hailing from a remote coastal Odisha village, has been nominated for 2019 International Children’s Peace Prize.

The girl is among a select number of nominated children from across among the world. International Children’s Peace Prize is instituted by Kids Rights.

Subhasmita’s father is a farmer and her mother a housewife. Youngest amongst her siblings, she is a Standard VII student at local Rajaganagr School. Children from the neighbouring villages also purse their studies at the same school.

Most of the children are from marginalised communities and lack exposure to many important aspects of life skills along with formal education curriculum.

Rajangar village is prone to natural calamities like tropical cyclone. Save the Children, an international development agency, imparted training to these young children on natural calamities and how to face them. In the process, Subhashmita learnt the basics on natural calamities and the resultant backwardness and ways how to cope with them to march ahead. Her ability to learn things quick and fast helped her to become the leader of local Child Cabinet.

She held regular meetings of the Child Cabinet, took minutes of the discussion and identified the issues that needed to be prioritised. Dropout of her peers from school came up as the top most priority.

This little girl had left no stones unturned to convince the family members of the dropout children to send their wards back to the schools.