Educate & Empower 50 girls from Rural India

Sheopur is one of the most backward districts of Madhya Pradesh with only 15% of the villages connected by roads. Agriculture is the main occupation and majority of the people are landless laborers and marginal farmers who migrate seasonally in search of work. The district is situated on the border of Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan – and by definition, border districts are neglected. The average literacy rate in the Sheopur district is 58.02%. The male literacy rate is 70.30% while the female literacy rate is only 44.45%. 80% of the girls here do not attend school regularly or drop-out of school, because they have to either look after younger siblings or contribute to the household income, or are married off by 13 years of age.

 This is the story of Ramkatha from a village named Karnyakhedli, in the middle of the Sheopur District of Madhya Pradesh. Improved agricultural techniques have left many farmers here moderately well-off. Tractors and motorcycles dot the landscape. Yet traditional practices are still largely observed. For most children, education comes to a halt when their labour is required in the fields. Caste lines here are still rigid. Ramkatha comes from a scheduled caste of manual labourers, for whom education has had no meaning.

 Project Nanhi Kali helped Ramkatha break with her community’s tradition. In 2010, she became the first scheduled caste girl in Karnyakhedli to complete 10^th standard. In her village, women are not allowed to step out of home and rarely into a school. Ramkatha now wakes up every morning at 5:00 am to travel to college, an hour away by bus, and returns home to study by the light of a kerosene lamp.

 Astonishingly she is exempted from housework. Her parents say they will support her for as long as she chooses to study- and that they owe their conviction to the constant support and guidance from Project Nanhi Kali. They soon had to ask themselves a question never before asked in her village: “What will she do?” Ramkatha’s answer: “Police inspector.”

“There is nothing special about me,” Ramkatha says of her accomplishment. “It’s because of Nanhi Kali,” She expects more girls to follow in her footsteps. She herself has four younger sisters; another dozen children belong to the joint family in which she lives.

Across the Sheopur district there are 7500 Nanhi Kalis in 189 villages. The project covers 30% of the 895 widely scattered schools in the district. As word of Ramkatha’s success gets out, it will have a positive impact on the education of girls across the region.

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