Providing Life Skills to 300 Girls living in Slums

Dear friends,

It gives Team Vacha great pleasure to share pictures from a training centre cum coordination office with you. Several of you have contributed for getting a small place of its own after 30 years of existence. Space in Mumbai is highly expensive and rents are sky high and never is the tenancy on long term basis now. A permanent space, however small, was needed for Vacha to survive. We had tried very hard to collect funds to buy space and had done locally. However, in the last phase, it was through contributions from GlobalGiving platform that made it possible to get this place. So a very big Thank You to all of you and to GlobalGiving. I am sharing a couple of pictures from a girls’ training. We will be putting up pictures from other parts of this 400 sq. ft. Place as they become more functional.

Vacha coordinates a programme of Learning Community of Girls supported by and planned with EMpower Foundation. Seven NGOs working in poor neighbourhoods participate in a project of empowering girls through leadership skills and skills in locating issues affecting their lives, planning, budget making, monitoring etc. and encourage them to own and execute the project themselves. They have carried out such projects at local level and share strategies and outcomes. This year they conducted a survey of girls experiences on issues of mobility i.e. access to public playgrounds, Public toilets and Public stands for newspaper reading, a special Mumbai feature in poor areas. The findings revealed threats and demeaning experiences. The survey was titled The Time Is Now with demands through advocacy. Girls from all centres including Vacha called a press conference to release the survey report and a charter of demands on April 12 at a Press Club. The press conference was covered by 10 daily newspapers and 3 TV channels. It is going to various authorities.

We continue to work with adolescent girls from deprived communities and thanks again for your regular support. Do visit our website www.vacha.org.in from time to time.

Thanks again and best wishes,

On February 21 we went to a different kind of area to hold a health and gender fair in a village in Shahpur Taluka of Thane district adjacent to Mumbai. Many do not relies that the island of Mumbai and its extension are very close to a forest, even though leopards get in to factories, schools and residential areas. They do not encroach, it is humans who have encroached in to their areas as the city expands. Tribals traditionally live in forest areas. Many still do in Thane district where the area is accessed from Mumbai through a network of railway and buses. One reaches Shahpur by going to Asangaon by a local train and then take a bus to Shahpur, the biggest town in the Taluka. We hired a large vehicle to carry the fair material. The only interventions made to spread education here have been residential aashram shallas, primary schools originally started by Gandhians and now supported by the govt. Different tribes often live in the same area. Some are more advanced because of land ownership or earlier access to education through missionaries and social welfare groups. We went to Kharade, a pada,a tiny hamlet. We were invited by Snehal Naik, a social worker who had once worked with Vacha and though not a tribal herself she and her family had always lived in another tribal area. Girls and boys in 8 to 16 year age group came from 6 schools in a cluster of villages. 269 girls and 92 boys in all attended the fair. Stalls were organized accordingly. Vacha team carried all the decorations and games for the fair.

Nothing like a fair had happened there before this event. Not much of any other exciting learning activities either. Even older children wanted to play games meant of younger ones and all kept coming again and again for the activities.  Stalls included playing out what they wanted to be when they grew up by using several kinds of dresses professional wore, Snakes and Ladder to watch out for opportunities and pitfall, pins and balls in which they threw out any social evil they wanted. Girls usually wanted to eradicate gender based inequality and   sexual assault. Many boys also wanted to wipeout sexual harassment. However, in an introduction to a game of needle and thread and nails and hammer, the boys put thread through a needle and girls hammered nails through a piece of wood to practice reversed roles. There were many such games planned that related to nutrition (girls get less of meat and portion) and helped out in agricultural operations despite participating in all household chores but boys got time to go out and play. A lot of such things were perceived, often the first time. Naik and her colleagues has a lot of follow work cut out for them. Despite covering a distance of over 90 miles one way on very bad and dusty roads it was a very fulfilling experience for us and we hope to remain in touch with Snehal and the organizations she works with in tribal areas. This fair was on behalf of Karve Institute of Social Service, Pune. In case some of the readers are not aware of Karve was a pioneering leader supporting and imparting women’s education and also fighting ban on widow remarriage among upper castes in 19^th and early 20^th centuries.