Empower girls like Priti in slums in Pune, India

Megha's life is typical of girls' in the slums we work in. At the age of 14, she knew nothing about puberty, menstruation, or how to look after her health as her body went through changes. Because of taboos and superstition, these things are not commonly discussed and there is a lot of misinformation. Girls can be confused and made to feel ashamed about being girls. Indeed, when Megha asked why this happens to girls and not boys, no-one in her family or slum could give her a satisfactory answer.

Her father passed away when she was young and her mother single handedly works to support both her and her sister. They live in the incredibly congested slum of Bhimnagar, Pune, and a house made of leftover waste materials and corrugated iron. Because she has two daughters and no son, her mother is particularly worried about the future financial situation of the family. 

Megha, however, was incredibly shy. Barely speaking, due to lack of confidence, she could barely contribute at school. When puberty hit, this exacerbated everything and Megha was ready to retreat to their home forever. 

Thankfully, she found her way to Green Tara Foundation's activities raising awareness on issues of hygiene and health amongst adolescent girls in the slums. She was able to ask many questions about her body, her physiology, and the differences between men and women. Through this she learnt that it was possible for her to achieve much more than she thought - she was not lesser and unclean just because she was female!

Megha has a new confidence in life now. She is active and more confident and is working at her studies with the hope of becoming a police officer one day. 

We have learnt time and time again how important awareness of puberty, menstruation and reproductive health is for these slum girls, who otherwise have no idea what's happening to them and why. It answers the questions they have, and exposes them to a different view of the role of women in society. 

Thank you so much for helping to fund this life changing work!

Thanks to your generosity, we are getting closer to reaching our fundraising target so that we can help more girls and young women from Vishrantwadi, Pune transform their lives through education.

We plan to help 1,000 girls like Priti to benefit from educational support classes. These classes provide vital small-group and individual tuition to girls who cannot get the support they need in overcrowded school classrooms. Our Support Classes give them 3 hours of dedicated support a day, and our girls are making fantastic progress compared to when they started.

The girls can also learn about their rights, have the confidence to delay early marriage and stand up against sexual harassment.

On International Women's Day, we will be running a variety of activities across our projects to raise further awareness of women's and girls' rights.

We wanted to let you know that our project is taking part in the GlobalGiving Girl Fund which gives us the opportunity to secure additional matched funding for the year, based on the number of donors. In addition, on International Women's Day (Wednesday 8th March),donations will be matched at 30%, up to $250 per donor, until funds run out.

Find out more about the The Girl Fund: https://goto.gg/3942 

Danashree, 13, lives in the area of Ramgarh Kalas.  Prioir to meeting the project team she was anaemic and very unhealthy. She would often be sick and wouldn’t have the energy to leave home. She became very isolated.  

Despite knowing she needed to put on weight and eat more, Danashree didn’t know how to cook. She understood very little about good nutrition, what to eat or how to cook healthy meals.

Danashree enrolled in the projects healthy cooking classes. The classes taught her all about getting the essential nutrients like iron, B vitamins and protein from the food they were eating. She learned how to cook simple and affordable recipes using nutrient dense foods.

Now Danashree is helping to cook cook for her family at home and they are benefiting from the skills she picked up from the project.  She also tells her friends about what she learned, so they are learning about good nutrition as well.

Danashree’s health has improved drastically. She is now able to go to school regularly, instead of being kept at home by weakness and frequent illness. She has changed her habits to eat less junk food and unhealthy snacks, and is instead eating healthy, protein-rich foods. Her whole family has benefited from her new knowledge, as she has shown them that healthy food can be delicious, and can be made cheaply at home.

Programme managers summary

During the last 6 months the project has implemented home visits more intensively as a means to making contact directly not only with the girls, but with their mothers.  The team has recognised that when the mothers feel confident and convinced about the safety of their girls they allow them much more freedom.

A particular highlight over the last six months has been working with 30 8th Standard girls who arrived at their school illiterate.  Through the support study classes these 30 girls are now reading and writing without difficulty and showing more motivation and interest in their studies generally.

Green Tara has a good reputation in the communities it works in and focuses successfully on continuity of rapport with both direct and indirect beneficiaries.

Major Achievements

• 80% of girls who have completed the project’s vocational training in the last six months are earning money through stitching and garment making activities. One of the girls who have graduated during the reporting period id now running her own business.
• The teams have made progress in reaching out to the Muslim community in the area. Before the team needed to encourage the women from the community to attend by going door to door. Now the women are taking the initiative in approaching the project and joining activities.  
• Seven girls refused early marriage during the reporting period. This is very unusual in the community where young girls have little say in their future.  Early marriage results in girls dropping out of school, leaving them completely dependent. In each case the girls are pursuing higher education or professional qualifications. 
• One 16 year old girl convinced her parents to allow her to complete her training as a tailor.  They had already fixed a marriage for her but now they have agreed she can marry when she is 18.
• A girl who was a beneficiary of the project was supported to take file a police report against her brother who was sexually attacking her and her sisters at night. This demonstrates strong increase in confidence by the girls who would have been shamed into keeping quiet without help from the team.

Challenges

There has been a challenge in finding ways of ensuring the girls regularity at the study classes. This is caused by the mothers who often work and need the girls to stay at home and look after younger siblings or do housework. It was found that 75% of the fathers were unemployed. The project is now working actively with the mothers to get the fathers more involved in the day-to-day activities in the home.

There is also challenge ensuring that the girls have enough time for their extra tuition. One school now actively supports the team to run tuition classes for two hours before school. The results are clear that girls need this extra time. In June, 30 girls entered school, aged 13, and none of them could read or write.  With extra tuition and home visits the girls are now literate and as a result not only display more confidence but are far more motivated in their studies generally. One challenge with the extra tuition groups is finding staff who can teach mixed-ability groups. Staff training will be needed and also more continuity with the same teacher.

Ruby, 12, lives with her mother and two brothers in a shack constructed of tin in the slum of Gunjar Vasti.

Before joining project activities Ruby’s family had migrated from a village to a city slum and Ruby found the change very difficult. Ruby was doing poorly at school and she felt it difficult to sit still or to concentrate for very long. She was always in trouble with her teachers. This worried Rubys mother who felt that she was intelligent and had lots of potential.

However Ruby’s mother couldn’t help Ruby with her studies because she had never had the opportunity to go to school herself. So she enrolled Ruby in the projects study support classes in October of 2015.  

With help from the project team Ruby is now doing well in school. She is reading and writing English and got good marks in her recent exams. Before Ruby was very shy but she is making friends and has become confident in making the journey to school on her own. Ruby wants to be a teacher in the future and now feels like she can do it with the help of the project. Thank you to all our supporters who helped Ruby overcome her obstacles.