Give A Girl A Bicycle - Help Her To Go School

The following is a postcard from Neeharika Tummala, GlobalGiving's In-the-Field Representative in India, about her recent visit to Gram Vikas Trust.

Visiting the ladies in the Jhagadia block in Bharuch, was one of my most fun site visits. The ladies took a few minutes to open up, but after that they are all smiles and giggles as they laughed and spoke about school, their families and their cycles!

The Gram Vikas Trust staff (Harshad, Mittal and Jignesh) and I first went to a middle school where we visited a few classes with girls who had received cycles. School was out so we hung out outside in the courtyard as I got to learn more about the ladies. After that we drove in to the villages, which made me realize what a long distance it is to have to walk to school without any transportation. It was really easy to understand as to why girls in this area would be high risk for school dropouts.

However, after getting the cycles from GVT, the girls can now ride the cycles to the main road, where they get picked up by buses which go to school. I spoke to several mothers who talked about how nice it is to see their girls going to school and doing well. I also got to see a lot of the secondary benefits of having a cycle such as siblings benefiting from it as well and encouraging some after school riding. My favourite moment was seeing the girls riding back from school in a group and showing off a few tricks as they did a few circles and headed back towards us. It was so refreshing to see the enthusiasm that these girls have for school!

A Child without Education is like a Bird without wings; Tibetian Proverb

I would love to share the things that have been shared by the girls who received bicycle before 3 months through this project.  The academic years for schools have been started since 1^st June, 2014. The girls are able to go schools regularly. It is Monsoon in India presently, interior villages faces lot of problem due to heavy rain especially school children to reach school. While our visit to schools, the head master of the school shared his gratitude for providing bicycle to these girls. They used to have very less attendance before but now girls are coming regularly in the schools.

Girls go together to school. They are able to reach on time and do not miss any classes. All 20 girls are studying in different standard and they have enrolled in upper standard this year. One of the girls shared her feeling with me. Her name is Leanne Christee (Beneficiary name changed). She is enrolled in 9^th standard this year. I feel so proud of her because she has cope up from all the barriers in life and has started attending school again after a drop out of 3 years.  She was dropped out after 7^th standard and now she is back to school. She says that I have to walk 14km a day to reach school and come back home. But now I do not have to take much trouble as I have got bicycle to go school and complete my education. I want to pursue graduation and this is an initiative to full fill my dream.   

Thank you to all our donors and supports for contributing to full fill the dream of these girls. Your continue support will help make many other girls like leanne to get education. We are aiming to support more 250 girls this year.

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