Give A Girl A Bicycle - Help Her To Go School

The following is a postcard from Neeharika Tummala, GlobalGiving's In-the-Field Representative in India, about her recent visit to Gram Vikas Trust.

Visiting the ladies in the Jhagadia block in Bharuch, was one of my most fun site visits. The ladies took a few minutes to open up, but after that they are all smiles and giggles as they laughed and spoke about school, their families and their cycles!

The Gram Vikas Trust staff (Harshad, Mittal and Jignesh) and I first went to a middle school where we visited a few classes with girls who had received cycles. School was out so we hung out outside in the courtyard as I got to learn more about the ladies. After that we drove in to the villages, which made me realize what a long distance it is to have to walk to school without any transportation. It was really easy to understand as to why girls in this area would be high risk for school dropouts.

However, after getting the cycles from GVT, the girls can now ride the cycles to the main road, where they get picked up by buses which go to school. I spoke to several mothers who talked about how nice it is to see their girls going to school and doing well. I also got to see a lot of the secondary benefits of having a cycle such as siblings benefiting from it as well and encouraging some after school riding. My favourite moment was seeing the girls riding back from school in a group and showing off a few tricks as they did a few circles and headed back towards us. It was so refreshing to see the enthusiasm that these girls have for school!