By Manak Matiyani | Project Leader
The YP Foundation, alongwith community based organisations, runs workshops and sessions on sexual and reproductive health in Rajasthan. This story is from one of the participants of the sessions which has been translated from Hindi.
"My name is Nazmin but everyone at home calls me Koyal. I am 17 years old and live in a small village in rural Rajasthan. When I heard about the sessions that The YP Foundation was holding in our village on topics of sexual and reproductive health, I was shocked because I have never heard anyone talk about these issues, so I refused to attend the sessions. I had a firm belief that my parents and community members were correct in their ways of teaching me any of the topics.
I left school after studying till class 10. I belong to a Muslim community in a society where girls are married off at an early age and is not given permission to study further or leave the house. Slowly but steadily, I started recognizing these instances of inequalities in and around me, so I started attending the sessions and realized their importance from a rights-based perspective.
The sessions ranged from various topics such as gender-based violence, social discrimination, menstruation, changes during puberty, HIV and contraception. Through attending these sessions, I recognized a change in me – I felt confidence in explaining my stances to other people. Today I have collectivized girls within my community, have started holding sessions on these topics and often have indepth discussions on them. I run sessions in my community on these topics because I feel it is important to empower other girls with this information, the same way I was empowered."
Thank you so much for your generous support so far because of which young girls like Koyal feel empowered and wishes to empower other girls in her community!
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