By Julia Krepska | Founder and Director
We've got some really exciting news - in March this year we launched our new project, End to Child Marriage, in Janakpur! Our wonderful Sabita and her team are managing the project and the results are already amazing. The aim is to provide education to those underage girls who are either already married or at risk of getting married early. I visited the project last week and had some chats with the girls who all promised to stay in education. They are really enjoying their classes with our teacher - these will last for 8 months, and after that they will be enrolled into a regular school or vocational training. And on top of that they will continue to received our extra tuition classes. Even after such a short time the girls are so inspired and most attend the classes everyday - so a big change for them, majority have never been to school before.
I also met the principal and the teachers from the school that we are working with – they are providing us a classroom for our classes and soon we will work on the school garden project together. We are very grateful to the school and hoping that relationship will last for many years and together we can help even more girls.
Where we work, 1 in 2 girls gets married when she is still a child. The dowry system is still prevalent, even though it's illegal - the more educated the girl is, the more dowry her parents have to pay to the future husband's family. That often leads to the families not sending their daughters to school on purpose. Child marriage also often leads to domestic violence. This together with our main EmpowerHER programme will lead with time to reduced levels of child marriage and violence in the region. There is a lot more work to be done though and our staff do many training sessions for the local communities on the issues surrounding child marriage and domestic violence. It will take a long time to change these things but we are staying positive!
Thank you very much for all the support so far. It really means a lot and it really makes a difference to the girls’ lives!
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