Empower 100 Girls in Asia's Largest Red Light Area

Outreach: 

Our outreach team is the first and usually preferred point of contact between Apne Aap Women’s Collective and the community inhabiting Kamathipura and Falkland Road, the red-light districts of Mumbai. Though there are many beneficiaries who are in need of our services, but due to infrastructure limitations, we could enroll 8 beneficiaries in the last quarter with the maximum strength being 83. Upon enrollments, these beneficiaries have access to formal and informal education, all forms of assistance with their health (ex: referrals, camps, nutritional support, etc.), awareness activities, counseling and therapies, vocational training, life skills sessions, rehabilitative measures like night-shelter house and boarding homes, etc among other general support.
 

Education:

This quarter, we have started with “Friday Sessions”, where the Udaan beneficiaries can have a theme of a topic that week to discuss on. The objective of the sessions were to clarify basic fundamentals every week, so that they have their base strong in those subjects. This is also a group activity, where all the beneficiaries of that group can come to know about each other’s weaknesses and help each other. We have emphasized more on tuitions, where we have conducted regular monthly assessments of 77 beneficiaries. There were special timetables made in order to support girls for their studies. We also conducted tuition teacher’s meeting on a weekly basis, where the student’s assessment, performance and the teacher’s regular plans were discussed.

18 Regular school visits and follow ups have been done in order to get new admissions done, assessing the beneficiaries’ performance. Home visits have also been done in order to motivate parents to keep their girls in schools. As a result of which, there have been 7 new school admissions, keeping the strength in English medium schools as 41 and vernacular medium as 35. Also, there have been 3 college admissions also.

Also, 2 girls passed 10^th standard and 2 girls passed their 12^th standard

Multiple English classes and computer sessions were undertaken during the same tenure. While the spoken English classes concentrated primarily on developing the grammar and social skills of our beneficiaries, the computer classes were aimed at enhancing their understanding of Microsoft Word, Excel and Paint tools and many other.

Spoken English classes were also held where some interactive games related to English learning were conducted for active and fun learning of the beneficiaries. Computer classes and English-speaking sessions were also conducted.

 Health and Nutrition: 

At AAWC, we place utmost importance on the health and nutritional aid provided to our beneficiaries. Knowing the fact that all of our members are from a highly vulnerable and marginalized community, and live in environments that often trigger ill health- our activities range from spreading awareness on general hygiene, sanitation, and required medical support to holding quarterly health camps targeting specific ailments. We have also arranged periodic supply of sourdough breads, healthy salads and sandwiches, which complement the beneficiaries’ daily meals with varied tastes.

Along with this, we aid our beneficiaries with specialized awareness programs (ex: puberty and the ensuing bodily changes, gender and sexual education, medical treatments for contagious diseases, seasonal healthcare, etc.), routine medical referrals, nutritional aid provided through a well-designed diet chart, multivitamin and protein supplements, following up with hospitals and doctors, etc.

In this quarter, we collaborated with private clinic Lions club clinic for monthly medical checkup, where 48 beneficiaries got themselves checked, 114 medical referrals done. A health camp was organized where 69 beneficiaries took part, and the growth chart of 64 beneficiaries was filled in order to track their health growth. Height and weight of 61 beneficiaries was calculated.

Under nutritional aids, nutrition was provided 11398 times to 68 beneficiaries, where multivitamins were provided 3339 times to 68 Udaan beneficiaries.

 There have been 141 medical referrals done for the beneficiaries in the Night shelter.

 A big satisfaction of this quarter was that the girls’ health improved considerably and on top of it none of them were found with HIV or Tuberculosis infection.

Counseling: 

As part of her art therapy, one of our regular volunteers holds simple activities to help our beneficiaries process their feelings better. Especially considering the difficult backgrounds of our children, these sessions are highly beneficial for them to recognize their own emotions and work on them accordingly.

In this quarter, sessions on behavior issues, strategies to control anger, absenteeism and good touch bad touch were done in which extensive discussions were conducted and because of which, the beneficiaries came out and discussed their issues, which were resolved thereafter. In addition, the beneficiaries were also counseled personally on absenteeism and issues while studying. 

Night shelter: 

We also run our own rehabilitative night shelter for the most vulnerable toddlers and adolescent girls. We recognized the need for safe and secured space, when we assessed that many adolescent girls of Kamathipura were lured into the flesh trade by the brothel owner/other close-knit community members that their mothers (and the girls themselves, often) were living under. Especially since the brothel owners would find it easier to trap a young girl already living in the community, than to traffic girls from other parts of the country- such a phenomenon has become rather common in the red-light districts of Mumbai.

Thus, we run a night shelter with a capacity for almost 40 adolescent girls along with 6 new beneficiaries enrolled this quarter. Our night shelter beneficiaries participate in all our educational, health and empowerment-based activities along with the usual extra-curricular, recreational visits and celebrations held at the center during the day.

Empowerment: 

Along with recognizing the fundamental need for better health and education, we also work on empowerment in terms of vocational activities, identity-based documentation aid, life skills sessions and development of leadership skills through various extra-curricular. This quarter, we helped creating 12 health cards for the beneficiaries to be able to avail the benefits of the it.

To inculcate sense of responsibilities, we have a system of weekly “house on duties”, where different houses/groups are made and different group of girls are assigned to monitor and implement different chores of the shelter, such as cleaning their spaces, sorting and organizing the materials that they use, ensuring sanitation etc. the duties keep on shuffling. These are different activities which also helps them inbuilding their confidence in organising and understanding the importance of different duties in life.

In this quarter, regular Udaan girls’ monthly meetings, where the various rules, do’s and don’ts’ for the day and night activities were discussed with an aim of developing a more learning and role-modeling conducive environment from Udaan to Umang beneficiaries. Regular mother’s meetings were also held in order to discuss the Udaan beneficiary performance in the school and in the shelter and discuss the parent’s involvement in the beneficiaries’ education, motivation and morale.

Life skill Sessions / (personal safety education) sessions were conducted on the topic mainly on“hygiene’ and ‘discipline’ we explained and discussed the importance of sanitation to our bodies as well as environment, importance of discipline in our daily lives. It majorly focused on the basic etiquettes of maintaining discipline in the class.6 Video screening of moral stories took place this quarter. The videos were based on child labour and its ill effects, importance of education, nature, good behavior and habits. Karate classes on Sundays took place this quarter, where they learned basic block moves and strength techniques.

Regular Udaan- Umang mentoring sessions were also conducted where the Udaan beneficiaries would conduct a small interactive session with the Umang beneficiaries, in order to develop a healthy peer-relationship. They would discuss about good behaviors and respecting elders. In order to make the sessions morecreative, we conduct different activities such as activities to understand facial expressions, teach patriotic songs etc. This would develop their peer-relationships better.

This quarter “The RobinHood Army” conducted workshops on self-defense with the Udaan beneficiaries. They distributed snacks to the beneficiaries as a part of refreshments. Everyone was given a chance to do a practical.

 Extra-curricular activities: 

In this quarter, we are so excited to tell youabout the landmark development of AAWC history, where 6 of our Udaan beneficiaries took part in Brave Kids festival held in Poland.

 To provide you with a little bit of background, this Brave Kids festival is about bringing together children from all over the world in an atmosphere of friendship and respect for each other's cultures. They do so by joining together children in artistic experiences aimed to inspire them to imagine a better future for themselves and their communities, and provide them with tools to help realize their aspirations.

The resource persons from our partner organization “Clowns without Borders”, trained Udaan girls months before the final performance. They prepared for various clowning shows to be performed at Poland and Sweden.

Prior visit to Poland and Sweden, we held 4 shows in Mumbai for the girls to understand what performing in front of a public was about.

The beneficiaries stayed two weeks in Siechnice, Poland and one week in Oborniki, Poland where the participants performed 8 shows, and then the last week in Stockholm, Sweden, where they performed 5 shows.

 All in all, it was a great opportunity for our girls to further develop their acting skills and boost their self-esteem. This experience also allowed our girls to be exposed to a different culture, country and people. It opened their mind to diversity and taught them to interact with people completely different from them. This represent a big step towards their empowerment, as now they know that a lot of challenges, which theyface can be overcome with enough preparation, discipline, and good attitude.

 After returning from the trip,girls shared their experiences with the other beneficiaries and their mothers.

Their experience sharing included:

A brief about Brave Kids, Information about Poland, its capital, the currency, the food there, their official language, weather etc. and the whole itinerary. They also shared their photographs and videos with experiences of the training and learning there, their host family, their visit to Sweden, its capital currency, language and whole experience of the trip.

Additionally, this quarter,we held many extra-curricular activities like theater classes, computer classes, English speaking sessions, music classes and fashion designing classes. Theatre Classeswere conducted under the topics of: Introduction, Theatre games, characterization, Stop and pleasant impression on stage. They also learned Theatre games, Focus games, Placement skit, Stage Drama game, Story making and many more related to this.

 On the other hand, we conducted 80 diverse vocational activities during the span of the quarter, such as fashion designing classes, music classes, dance classes, mehandi classes etc. Under fashion designing, they learned various stitching techniques.

 We also held 9 exposure/recreational visits, where one visit took place at Chatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya (CSMVS) where 10 Udaan girls visited to participate in drawing competition. The theme was “museum of my dreams”. There were many kids from many other schools who participated in the competition, girls enjoyed painting amidst all and got to see various other paintings as well. Career Fair was also organized where 6 of our beneficiaries visited Marico Limited from 3 to 5pm. In this career fair, sessions on 4 topics related HR, Finance, Admin & Sales and marketing were taken with each topic for 30 minutes. Our beneficiaries found the Career Fair very useful and informative. Children’s Museum Competition was also conducted where Udaan Girls took part in Writing and painting competition. Four beneficiaries took part for “My Little Museum” writing competition One of our girls also participated for the painting competition.

 There were some in house recreational activities conducted such as drawing activities, dance classes, outdoor activities such as skipping the rope, kho-kho, badminton etc, and indoor games such as puzzles, oral games, jenga, jigsaw puzzles etc.

 Celebrations:

Udaan girls celebrated “Independence Day” and participated in drawing and painting activity of national flag. Some of the girls also gave a speech on some of the freedom fighters. Program ended with singing a national song and the national anthem

Udaan girls celebrated “Raksha Bandhan” andmade rakhis with the material provided .They tied “Rakhis” on each other’s’ wrists with proper rituals and a promise to respect and protect each other. They even tied “Rakhis” to their teachers.

Udaan girls celebrated “Teacher’s Day” with Umang beneficiaries, ,where the older Udaan girls taught Umang beneficiaries for a day. As a result, they realized the fact of the efforts their teachers put in while teaching and managing children. They even enacted some of their favorite teachers. As a token of appreciation and gratefulness, Udaan beneficiaries made paper flowers and greeting cards on their own. They gave it to each and every teacher sharing few words of appreciation for their contributions.