Lifeskill,Sexuality Education for 1000 girls-India

Life skill, Sexuality Education for 1000 girls-India ( 14480)

Update Oct 2021.

The best thing happened during this period is the schools that is from class 9th to 12th standard are opened in Tamilnadu from 1st September 2021.   This is a big relief and change for adolescent girls.  Schools were closed for more than 18 months they have lost two academic years, not only that they did not get the free sanitary pads, supplementary nutrition food distributed through schools, they could not play meet their friends all these have impacted them mentally and physically, more than that many of them dropped out of schools, particularly those were studying in private schools they could not able to pay the school fees because both the parents have lost their jobs, and parents do not want to pay fees where classes are not conducted, worst of them all is the increase in child labour, child marriages, girl children's abuse. Hope the reopening of schools will change some of these situation’s.  We have been addressing some of these issues but with limited number of girls. Now  for us it is easy to meet them in schools and outside for our lifeskill and sexuality education.

The biggest issue now is to find out and bring back girls to schools, now the girls have academically jumped from 7th to 9th standard or 10th to 12 standard class, actually mission one class in between that means missing one year of lessons.  Since all our girls are poor they also could not attend the online classes organized by some of the schools mostly private schools.  So these girls need lot of help to bridge this gap,  we also have to strengthen our life skill sexuality education to prevent child marriages, child abuse and child labour.  We had 3 meetings with adolescent girls to understand their present situation and the helps they need.  95 girls participated in these meetings.  We have also organized parents meeting particularly mothers meetings in 5 slums and 4 villages mostly to discuss about the importance of girl children's education and the importance of preventing child marriages. We are also in the process of discussing with school teachers. What we understood is we cannot conduct schools level activities because the teachers are running short of time and resources to cover the lessons. So we have to organize all most all our activities outside the schools.  We already have been distributing printed materials and now in the process of updating our 'Snehidhi' app.  We have also realized this is the time to leverage digital technologies. Our field staff organized meetings at the slum and village level to orient girls to continue their schools education and ways of preventing child marriages and abuse, using help from outside like Childline, local police stations, school teachers.    We have started orienting out field workers and 50 local level 'Snehidhi' adolescent girls leaders in using digital technologies like online meeting like zoom, webinars, whatsapp.  We have been raising resources to create infra structures for that.

For those girls who have passed 12th standard  and wish to continue their education to the university level, it is big challenge. This year all the girls have passed in 12th standard without any examination, marks were given based on their previous performances.  Some of the bright girls could not afford to pay the college fees so they could not able to go for college education.  Colleges have now opened for the final year students, but the admission is going on.  We are in the process searching scholarships for at least 10 girls who wish to continue their education.  Mobilizing funds is a great challenge for us during this Covid 19 lockdown.

Even though it was tough time for us, the opening of schools and motivation and confidence of adolescent girls and women gives us lot of hope and confidence to continue our work of educating and empowering women and girls.