Education for 100 street children in India

The Ashraya college students are both nervous and excited to complete their graduation and enter into the next phase of their lives! Their days keep them busy juggling academics and their internships at Ashraya which have slowly led them to question certain perceptions and traditions of their respective communities. The Waghri and Sikhligar communities are conservative and patriarchal, and have low financial and social mobility for girls and woman. Although the community members have come a long way since 2005, when Ashraya started its work with them, they still lack awareness and incentive to change their core beliefs.

The college girls, who are eager to be changemakers in their own spaces, conducted a survey within their settlements, to understand the general perception of their parents and adults towards gender, education and livelihoods. A general consensus was that the community has started viewing education as an integral aspect of their children’s lives, and their attitudes towards girl child education, women’s employment and independence has shifted, and is continuing to shift, for the better. Some students observed a decrease in the dependency on alcohol within the community, others have reported that the community members are gravitating towards starting their own businesses rather than taking up wage labour. However, despite these impressive strides towards empowerment, there still remain a lot of issues that need to be addressed. These include lack of incentive to educate girls, early marriage, lack of physical and financial mobility for girls.  

These concerns have been taken up by the college girls who have identified them as crucial especially as it directly impacts their access to safe spaces. They brainstormed and came up with the idea of conducting a campaign for gender equality in their slums. The campaign targeted the adverse effects of early marriage, early pregnancy and improving access to educational equity through charts, slogans, a puppet show and door to door awareness. The girls also got twenty families in their communities to sign up for Sukanya Samriddhi Yojana i.e. a scheme promoting financial security for girl children. This campaign enabled the girls to take charge of creating safer spaces for younger girls in the community and move one step towards sustainable empowerment, all the while setting a strong example for the next generation. 

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Ashraya’s communities (Waghri’s and Sikhligar’s) are traditionally rigidly patriarchal. With a history of practicing dowry (the concept of the bride’s family giving, often unaffordable and under coercion, large sums of money to the groom’s family), early marriage, especially for adolescent girls in the community, and early/teen pregnancy with no awareness and access to birth control measures. The Waghri and Sikhligar women have a weak literacy rate, much lower than the men in the community (24%), often due to fierce resistance to education and pressure of early marriages. Facing a variety of concerns ranging from low social mobility, lack of confidence and family support, harassment from peers and education providers, and a sense of futility or belief that education will not be relevant or essential in their future live leads to a high dropout rate in the community girls feeding into the cycle of poverty and patriarchy. 

Although undeniably impressive strides have been made in the Waghri and Sikligar communities in the past ten years, it remains a constant struggle to retain girls in school once they reach adolescence. We believe that to be effective; we need to proactively and strategically address these needs and issues. Most of the adolescent girls enrolled at Ashraya have at one time experienced pressure and prejudice from the larger community to give up their education and get married. The risk of exploitation and abuse remains predominant due to the high prevalence of alcoholism and domestic violence. Sikhligar women are not permitted to work outside their houses, and girls are reduced to caregivers and homemakers by tradition.  

To sustainably empower the Waghri’s and Sikhlihar’s it was understood early on that a pivotal step is to provide equitable support of girls and women. It was integral to create a perception shift within the larger community to reduce the social stigma around education and employment of girls and women. This challenging journey has resulted in a 100% female induction rate in education from all families and, more importantly, a 100% female retention rate during COVID. India saw roughly 10 million girls drop out during the pandemic, pushing them towards child labor and early marriage. Ashraya has always been taking massive strides towards promoting gender equality, especially through capacitating community women volunteers to be our messengers and ensuring that families enrolled have all their girls attending school and after-school support regularly. This year Ashraya celebrated International Day of the Girl Child at the Education center (With COVID protocols and restrictions in place!) to highlight the work that has been done in the last 15 years to empower girls and women. Parents, especially fathers, were encouraged to come and talk about the steps they are taking every day to ensure that their girls are educated, healthy and safe. The absolute highlight of the event was the Sikhligar father’s expressing the importance of education of their daughters and their aspirations regarding their lives. They also discussed making their communities/slums safe spaces for their girls and women and the importance of the women in their families. It was a significant milestone for Ashraya, where women are viewed as the pillars of community empowerment, and girls are the future changemakers.

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