End Child Marriage Through Education

Shadhika Alum have been participating in a lot of Shadhika activities and programs recently. We try to involve our Shadhika Alum in several activities such as reviewing applications for new scholars and our annual planning. They are very interested in connecting with Shadhika programs and we really value their participation. They are true leaders who always motivate young scholars in Shadhika. We feel really proud to have an Alum team. Recently, at the Leaders for Change Summit 2021, two Shadhika Alum Priya and Razia from Stop NGO conducted workshops.

Priya has been an active Shadhika Alum, and at the Leaders for Change Summit she conducted a workshop on goal setting on day one. All scholars and graduates attended her workshop. She talked about how to set SMART goals and how scholars can achieve their goals by practicing and working on their daily tasks. She talked about goal mapping, shared examples, and later did a question & answer session for scholars.

During my conversation with Priya, she shared her experience and said “I feel so good to conduct this goal setting workshop. I was happy to meet virtually all of the scholars. It is the most exciting thing to me. I am happy that I am able to convey my thoughts to new scholars and to share my knowledge and wisdom with them. That was a great opportunity for me. In the beginning I was a little hesitant but now I feel much more confident, I feel grateful and I got a lot of good feedback and appreciation from scholars.”

We have another alum Razia who conducted a workshop on poetry on day two. She explained the history of poetry, types of poetry, recitation of poetry, and shared a method to write poetry with scholars. Scholars also got a chance to write their own poetry during the workshop. They asked Razia questions and she helped them write poetry.

Razia shared her experience and said, “I feel respected, and proud at the same time. The experience was really amazing which I can't share in words. The feedback from scholars was great, some students shared their poems with me after the workshop plus in group they all shared their piece of work which made me happy. And their response shows that they liked the workshop”. One of the Shadhika scholars shared her poem during the workshop:

Education is very important

All frailty washes away from education

How much we will study

There's no end of education

Gives wisdom to the ignorant

Knowledge to the ignorant

From education we can make India a great country!

     -Bharti (Shadhika Scholar)

Here at Shadhika, the network of sisterhood and community our in-country NGO partners have provided for each other is small but bright light in an otherwise extremely dark and deadly time in India. To provide some context, as the rest of the world begins to move forward, the Covid-19 situation in India is getting worse. India is in a strict lockdown until  June 1st and this lockdown might need to continue even longer because of the second wave of corona virus spreading all over the country. India need more oxygen, hospital beds, and vaccine doses. We feel really sad because the death toll is increasing daily and people are not able to find a place to cremate their loved ones. Since India is in a lockdown, people have been  fired from their jobs  and they don’t have any sources of income. It is directly affecting  their health because they don’t have any money to feed themselves and their families, or to pay their rent or bills, and purchase medicine.

Vaccination’s Centre opened starting in May for people over 18 but now  states do not have enough vaccines. India has a website to get an appointment for a vaccine but so much traffic is on the website that is not working. And what about  people who don’t have Internet access and technology, how would they get a slot?

Through this difficult time, Shadhika and our partners have been working extremely hard to create a network of support for each other and the young women that we serve. Our NGO partners are supporting each program participant by regularly providing ration kits and internet to support their virtual college classes, as well as conducting many virtual workshops and activities to make this time valuable and educational for program participants. Continuing this work while also personally being hit really hard by this situation and this is not easy for them. NGO staff are  facing many challenges; they have to look after their family, communicate with girls within their programs that they are supporting,  some of their family members are sick, but they have not lost their hope. Rather, we have seen the immense courage and sense of community shine during this difficult time. While currently physically distanced, we at Shadhika have seen women across India stand up to take the burden from one another when it gets too heavy to carry alone. We have witnessed tremendous strength and growth within ourselves and our partners to step up to the plate and ensure that we do everything possible to ensure that the COVID-19 crisis does not derail the future of our program participants. Through all of the tragedy, our NGO partners have left us filled with determination that our work is now more important than ever, and we are grateful for their dedication to the young women we serve, despite all of the hardships the COVID-19 pandemic has brought with this second wave. They are trying each and every day and providing necessary support to those who need it.