Lifeskill,Sexuality Education for 1000 girls-India

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

Update January 2022.

The Corona 19 lockdown continued, there is this new omicron corona virus, the Corona 3rd wave started, the opened schools were closed, lockdowns become stringent.  Suddenly it’s become one step forward and two steps backwards.  Anyway, the government had allowed to have vaccinations for 14-18 years children and most of the school going children received their vaccinations.  The number of girl children's abuse, rape, child marriage and suicides increased.  The impact of two years lockdown on children particularly adolescent girls is becoming apparent.  Suddenly mental health of adolescent girls become important, and we are not prepared for that. Added to this is our (NGOs) administrative issues like new amendments by the central government, our FCRA-Foreign Contribution Regulation Act certificate is not renewed and have been waiting for that with lot of anxieties, So we started the new year with these challenges and of course with lots of hope.

During November 2021- December 2021 the situation has become normal because schools were opened, the lockdown was relaxed, business become normal.  But in the new year the situation become worse because of the third wave of the Covid 19 and a new corona virus mutant omicron new lockdowns were announced, the schools and colleges were closed.  Being field based NGO, we cannot work from home-WFH, but our workload increases, and our funding sources decreases.  This is the time people particularly adolescent girls need support to carry on and face the situation.  So, we have been continuing our activities particularly life-skill sexuality education including mental health.  Slowey introducing the vocabulary and the language of mental health trying to help them come out of the taboo related mental health.  Luckily, we still could able to collect sanitary pad donations to distribute among adolescent girls.  During the last 3 months we could able to collect 3000 packets of sanitary pads and distribute among 1500 adolescent girls.  This helps to strengthen our CBO-Community Based Organization 'Snehidhi' association for adolescent girls, because they have to choose the beneficiaries for the free sanitary pads, they also have to meet 1500 adolescent girls individually mostly through house visits.  We also could able to conduct life-skill sexuality education trainings and meetings in small groups of 10-15 girls.  We are also trying help these girls with online education so that they will not lose their academic lessons.  The problem is most of the government schools do not conduct online classes because they don't have the necessary infra-structures.  We are trying to mobilize the equipment and trainings for our staff team so that they can help these girls in online learning.  In the coming days will become much more challenging for us and for the girls who complete their high school and higher secondary classes.  Last two years there was no classes and examination, this year we don't know, if there is no exam the college admissions will become difficult and confusing.  We have initiated discussion on this with the girls who are now in 12th standard classes.  We are planning to strengthen our G2G-Girls to Graduates programme and support at least few girls go to college and complete their graduation.  One of the important thing happened during this period is the government introduced 'The Prohibition of Child Marriage (Amendment) bill 2021 that seeks to raise the minimum legal age of marriage for girls from 18 to 21 years.  This would help the girls to continue their education up to graduate level, that is up to the age of 21 years. Another important thing happened during December 2021 the state government of Tamilnadu presented 'Tamilnadu State New Policy for Women 2021’.  The draft policy mentions about 'Adolescent Friendly Health Clinics-AFHC’ and many programmes to help women and adolescent girls. As per plan the policy will be implemented in the coming 5 years.  If implemented properly this would help adolescent girls.  We that is our staff team and Snehidhi leaders are discussing about the new policy on women for women to understand it further and the ways of participating in that.

Parents meetings:  We have organized monthly parents meeting in our working area that is 85 slums and 23 villages.  These meetings are attended by mothers. More than 1000 mothers participated in these meetings, to discuss about the present Covid situation and adolescent girls’ education, ways of preventing child marriages, government new bill on girls’ marriage and Tamilnadu government new policy for women.  In fact, many of the mothers were not supporting the idea of increasing the marriage age from 18 to 21 years, they think it will be a burden on them to look after girls even after 18 years. Even though the situation has become tough it also provided new opportunities and hope for us and the girls. Hope 2022 will become a year of change and development for girls and women.