A celebration of children’s courage and resilience on Saturday served up a message for adults: Create safer spaces for students of all ages.

That message was the overriding theme at the IIHM presents The Telegraph School Awards for Excellence 2024, 29th edition, in association with The Bhawanipur Education Society College and Exide.

At a packed Science City auditorium on Saturday, Barry O’Brien, founder-convener of the awards and trustee of The Telegraph Education Foundation, laid out the context at the beginning.

“This year, the theme we feel we should focus on is a safe and secure environment in educational institutions. From kindergarten school for children to postgraduate students pursuing medicine or engineering, we must ensure that at least the educational institutions are safe places for children, especially the girl child.”

O’Brien did not name names, but it was hard to miss the allusions. A postgraduate trainee was raped and murdered at RG Kar Medical College and Hospital a fortnight ago. Two kindergarten girls allegedly suffered sexual abuse in Maharashtra a few days ago.

Creating safe spaces could start with teaching them young, O’Brien said. “My appeal is, if you are starting a new school, think of making it co-ed. If you learn to respect each other from the time you are little, you may take that into your life.”

The resolve to fight predators resounded through the programme. It was embodied by 16-year-old Sansthitaa Dey, who received a standing ovation from an audience that wiped its tears while she held back hers.

On February 6, Sansthitaa held a screwdriver against the eyeballs of an elderly relative who had allegedly molested her a little over a week earlier. She forced him to apologise and informed his wife.

Within a few days of the confrontation, Sansthitaa took her Class X board exams.

But that is not even half her story.

Sansthitaa had grown up seeing her mother abused by her alcoholic father, who ran up a huge debt. Her home was mortgaged and her father arrested. She was branded a “criminal’s daughter”.

Her mother hanged herself two days before Sansthitaa’s 13th birthday. Living with her maternal uncle and aunt, Sansthitaa was on pills for depression.

The molestation left her with physical bruises and a traumatised mind. “Instinct” led her to confront her alleged tormentor. The confrontation helped restore her confidence, Sansthitaa told this newspaper.

One of the recipients of The Surrendra Paul Memorial Award For Courage on Saturday, Sansthitaa was poised even when the entire auditorium stood up for her, with many eyes turning moist.

“If my mother were here, she would have been standing up for me,” she said on stage.

It was only while leaving the stage that her eyes welled up.

Sansthitaa, a Class XI student of Ashok Hall Girls’ Higher Secondary School, wanted the audience to be told her story so that other children could gain from her experience.

The awards ceremony was held in two phases with over 120 recipients: students, institutions, teachers — anyone associated with education in the real sense.

“We disbursed scholarships worth over ₹40 lakh,” said a representative of The Telegraph Education Foundation.

Notes from the audience pledging support to the students, which Barry O’Brien called “lovestrips”, were delivered to him multiple times during the show. From laptops to cash help, the notes spelt hope.

Saturday’s programme started with a fireside chat that O’Brien had with two women “who reclaim the night every night”.

Shampa Malik, a security guard at Jadavpur University, and Esnatora Bibi Khatun, an app cab driver, together received a standing ovation.

Shampa, one of four women guards at the university, said: “I have to be the registrar’s bodyguard, I have to welcome guests, I have to deal with all kinds of jhamela (unrest).”

A teenager from North 24-Parganas, instrumental in the rescue of an older friend from her neighbourhood who was on the verge of being trafficked, was among the awardees.

Priyanka Pramanik, all of 15, had investigated the “disappearance” of her friend. The search led Priyanka to a youth who had befriended the victim and kidnapped her with the lure of a better life.

The same bait facilitates the trafficking of many women and girls from North and South 24-Parganas, the two trafficking hotbeds of Bengal.

Priyanka contacted the NGO, Kolkata Mary Ward Social Centre, which led to the rescue.

“When I now see her leading a normal life, I feel a sense of satisfaction,” Priyanka said after receiving The Sonika Chauhan Award for Courage.

In Purbasthali, East Burdwan, a teacher and his band of feisty girls from Minapur Lower Basic School helped bring child marriage in their village down from “42 per cent to zero”.

Selima Bibi, from Basirhat in North 24-Parganas, was one of the recipients of The Abhirup Bhadra Memorial “Thank You Baba-Ma” Award.

Widowed young and with two daughters, Selima was thrown out of her in-laws’. She toiled as a daily wage earner, often sleeping hungry so she could put food on her children’s plates.

A sewing machine she was able to buy helped improve her life slightly. Her elder daughter is now training to become a nurse and her younger daughter is in Class XI, having cleared Madhyamik with stellar marks.

“I was looked down upon for having two daughters. But I think daughters are gifts from God,” she told this newspaper.

Women taking to new frontiers was not limited tothe recipients.

O’Brien, fondly called “Barry Sir” by many, has been hosting the awards since its inception in 1996. On Saturday, the baton was passed, albeit partially, to his daughter Raisa O’Brien.

For a part of the programme, father and daughter did the conducting together, from two ends of the dais.

“I believe everybody has to someday call it a day... as the baton is handed over. That person, initially, won’t be as good as her dad. But in a couple of years, she will be way better,” Barry O’Brien said.

Raisa, born the same year that The Telegraph School Awards began, said: “I don’t consider myself a very religious person. But I do make one annual pilgrimage on the last Saturday of August to the Science City, to The Telegraph School Awards.”