By Renuka K.R | Director
Life skill, Sexuality Education for 1000 girls-India ( 14480)
Update June 2021
The second wave of Covid 19 made the situation bad to worse, again they have lost their jobs, already borrowed more money. There are no hospital beds, medicine, oxygen, vaccines. COVID-19, like all health emergencies, is not gender-neutral. As with all crises, the consequences of the COVID-19 outbreak are felt most acutely by those already marginalized in society, including women and girls—particularly low-income in slums and villages. Girls and Women are at higher risk of violence and abuse due to increased tension the household and community. SRHR-Sexual and Reproductive Health Rights is a significant public health issue that requires high attention during Corona 19 pandemics.
In between the state government changed, DMK party had won the elections and formed new government, they promised and started giving Rs.2000 as relief money, they may continue it for 2 or 3 months. Women are saying it costs Rs. 840 for a cylinder of cooking gas, so they have to survive on the balance money. The worst affected are children, many parents could not pay their school fees, even though schools are closed many private schools are demanding school fees. Their food intake is reduced, their contact with friends from schools and neighbourhood is cut.
Schools have been closed for nearly 15 months. Since parents do not have jobs, many children are taking of odd jobs in hotels and shops when are opened. Now the plus 2 (12th standard) board examination is cancelled by the Central Government due to Covid 19. The state government may also follow it. How students are going to be assessed and promoted and how they will join for higher education, all these are big issues and no proper answers yet. Since the schools are closed children not only lost their education, poor children also lost their free mid-day meals, the poor girls lost their free sanitary pads and supplementary nutrition all these were distributed through schools. Our major part of sexual reproductive health education was conducted in schools that we could not conduct. Most of the time we also could not organize meetings, trainings in the slums and villages. Most of our work is done by our staff members through house visits and meeting girls individually. That limits the number of girls met by our staff members.
Since the government had changed, we once again organized a signature campaign to pressurize the government not to stop the free sanitary pads and supplementary nutrition’s but demanding to distribute it to their homes. We have collected nearly 500 signatures send a memorandum to the new Chief minister to address the issues of adolescent girls. On 28th May Menstrual Hygiene day We have initiated an online campaign "periods don't stop for pandemics, help adolescent girls' to get sanitary pads donation from the public. We are happy that we could able to reach out to more than 10,000 people most of them are women and collect sanitary pad donations. We are distributing the collected sanitary pads to slum girls. Along with the pads we will also distribute a pamphlet giving information about the preventive measures of Covid 19 and ways of making their sanitary pads with clean clothes at home. We are also promoting our app 'Snehidhi' an app to provide sexual reproductive health to adolescent girls. Nearly 1000 girls, who are members of 'Snehidhi' adolescent girls’ group are using it now. Most of the girls are also suggesting us to add pages for online education and career guidance, we are in the process of updating our app.
Another worrying thing is the increase in violence and abuse against girl children and increase in Child marriages. We are collection information about this from our working area and whenever possible help the affected girl children. In fact, it is one of the worst periods for the people particularly girl children, this situation throws many challenges for us to continue our work and help girls and women. We have learned to use digital tools, without funds we could able to mobilize relief materials including sanitary pads, books, toys and distribute among girl children. Hope this situation will change soon and help people particularly children continue their normal life.
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