The Indian Youth Climate Network (IYCN) in association with The Youth Parliament Foundation (TYPF) organised a one day workshop on Right to Information (RTI) Act on the 22nd of October, 2011 at the Youth Hub. The workshop was attended by 8 participants from the IYCN.
The RTI is one of the tools which could be utilized effectively for obtaining useful information about many environmental aspects, climate change policies as well as steps taken by the Government to ensure environmental conservation.
The Knowledge Center of IYCN has the mandate to build capacity among its members in different dimensions of climate change and allied matters through innovative delivery mechanisms such as lecture series, workshops, newsletters and project implementation. The KC’s mandate also is to facilitate peer to peer training with partners.
The KC acknowledges the need to introduce newer tools in Environment and Climate Education and Advocacy including public legal tools, which could readily be imparted to members and chapters. In this regard, it was felt to introduce RTI in IYCN and hence the workshop.
Sessions for RTI included many diverse rounds of informative paradigms including the following:
1. Political systems of India, organs of Indian political system, functions and roles, RTI in a democracy
2. Myths and Realities
3. Process of Filing application
4. Role Play
5. Feedback session
The facilitators involved the members in participatory techniques to understand the fundamentals of RTI along with revisiting the political, administrative as well as executive system in India.
The sessions were designed to let the members have a comprehensive understanding of the fudamental of RTI, the process involved and grievance redressal mechanisms
Further, the participants were also asked to do mock application filing sessions as well as doing a role play to have a deeper understanding of the subject. The team also provided case specific case studies filed by different individuals as good examples.