Ending Child Marriage in the Thar Desert

Dear Supporters, well wishers and donors,

Like the lasts, this quarter (October-December, 2015) was also highly exciting and full of challenges. As we all know that child marriage is a widespread limiter of child rights in the society of western Rajasthan. To eliminate this chronic we endeavour hard with an integrated and inclusive approach. In a highly participatory approach we thrived the project by going door to door, hamlets to hamlets and village to village and raised the awareness about the child marriages harms and it’s disasterous social, physical and intellectual effects on early married children.

We organised events with the key leaders of the villages, elected representative, religious leaders, key influential people and the wider community, in particular, with the family having children at risk of child marriage. Government and government officers play the key role of monitoring, implementation and punitive actions, hence we asked for their cooperation and called them in, in this movement. Intensive advocacy through events at the district worked very well, and we also got good support from child rights agencies like UNICEF, elected representative and government officials.

Illiteracy is a key function in poverty and has its sure impact in the poor decision making by people under pressure; education, however plays a great liberating role in this. We emphasised on this argument and put a lot of effort working with dropout kids to re-enroll them in the school.

We worked hard to train, educate and teach the front line workers (Aanganbadi workers, Accredited Social Health Activists, Auxiliary Nurse Midwives) on the issues of child marriage and its harms, so they could play the multiplier role in knowledge sharing by conducting meetings at the hamlet level in their field area. It gives us immense pleasure that our efforts delivered tangible impacts and inspired several villages to call themselves Child Marriage Free.

On the behalf of Urmul Trust, I extend my heartfelt thanks to all our donors, supporter, well wishers, national and international community and media for the constant support in multiple ways. We are thankful to our local community and different local stakeholders for the consistent support and encouragement in our campaign to end child marriage in western Rajasthan, India

We look forward for continued support and thoughts…

Arvind Ojha      

Urmul Trust, India.

A sum up of activities undertaken during this quarter

‘Child Marriage Free’ Panchayat

In this quarter, with round the clock endeavours of the team, total 3 Panchayats (Panchayat consists of average 4-6 villages in this region) were declared child marriage free by the Panchayat members and the people. This way Gram Panchayat Naneu became such first Panchayat declaring itself ‘Child Marriage Free’, in the Jodhpur district. It was never an easy task and it took months and great positive effort in changing the mindset of people. Initially people were very rigid and strongly opposed messaging taliking of how Child marriage affects badly the life of victim in multiple ways. We approached the community door-to-door, and gradually mobilised them using different strategies. , brought them out from home for the trainings on harms of child marriages. We organised the participatory sessions with the elected representatives, key influential people of the villages, religious leaders and different stakeholders on the issue of child marriages and its long term worst impact on the victims lives. In a very participatory way we formulated out the villages and panchayat wise strategies to eliminate the child marriages.

With the help of the villagers, government officers and Unicef, Urmul trust organised such three big events where villagers themselves declare them child marriage free panchayat and took oath not to do child marriage in the future.

After taking oath in, all the villagers, elected representatives including members of legislative assembly and guests from the Unicef and other organisations signed committing no to child marriage in the future. Following by the signing campaign a poster saying, ‘We are proud of our Child Marriage Free Panchayat’ was inaugurated by the guest and villagers.

Enrolling the girls deprived of education.

The girls dropped out or always devoid that opportunity are more vulnerable to the child marriage. Parents consider them as burden and want to get rid of as soon as possible. The neighbours and villagers play a very critical role in it and provoke the parents to marry as soon as possible. Hence, as a strategy, we have been reaching out to the girls who are deprived of education opportunity, to enrol them in school and help in continuing the study. In this quarter, we enrolled 40 girls in the schools from the 28 villages.

Organising Inter School “Girls Football Matches” at the village level to breach out the gender prejudices

The Thar region is one of the most patriarchal regions where girls rarely get the opportunity to express their self. It is considered that some areas are specially for the male members. It shows the masculine thoughts of the society and directly leads to the gender based discimination. An Inter-school football series for the girls was organised with the idea of challenging this thought. We organised several football matches in schools and prizes were distributed by the villagers and by the members of School Management Committee.

Linking people with the government welfare schemes-In this quarter, under the project ‘Ending Child Marriage in the Thar Desert, Rajasthan, India we have linked the total 61 beneficiaries (32 girls and 29 boys) with the government welfare schemes.

Training to the Adolescents Girls on the issue of Child Marriage - In this quarter, we organised the training sessions with 1246 Girls in the 54 villages on the issue and harms of child marriage in the life. The girls were imparted the knowledge on worst impact of child marriages and its long term worst impact on their lies.

Information dissemination through Puppet Show

To disseminate the information on the issue of child marriage we used traditional local songs and combined them with the puppet show. It has been very effective and impactful in generating the awareness among the distant villages.

Girl Child birth celebration at the Panchayat level.

In line with trdition, communities practise clinking plates (Thali Bajana) to celebrate birth of a boy in family. We wanted to challenge it arguing why this symbol of celebration exclusivly for boys. Urmul started the campaign to celebrate the birth of the girl child using the same tradition of clinking the plates (Thali Bajana). We took the campaign to the Panchayat heads, members and villagers., and got very encouraging support. We took up celebration of the girl child birth in campaign and organised celebrations in more 10 Villages.

Follow up meeting with ‘Child Marriage Free’ villages-

Urmul has been following up with the villages previosly declared child marriage free through our efforts. These meetings play a critical role in avoiding the relapse of child marriages in the villages already declared ‘Child Marriage Free’. In this quarter we organised 27 such meetings in as many villages.

Building capacity of the Panchayat representative-

In preventing and eliminating the child marriage practise, Pachayat representatives have played very important role. To build the knowledge and skills on the issue of child marriage we have been organising the capacity building training and workshops for the Panchayat representatives. In this quarter we worked with 120 Panchayat members from the 20 Panchayats through one day capacity building training.

Life skill training to the Adolescent girls - In this quarter we organised the life skill training attended by over 600 girls from the 27 villages.

Short film Suman – Another achievement of this quarter was the film shot on the theme of of child marriage a featuring one of our village girl Suman. A new York based film group read about our work and reached us to collaborate. We met Suman from our project area, and she agreed to tell her story. Suman shared how she resisted her child marriage and now motivating other girls in the village to not submitt to the pressure to marry before the legal age. The film shall soon be finished and we’d be organising a screening in our project villages.

Links:

• Urmul