Providing Life Skills to 300 Girls living in Slums

Dear friends,

As you know Vacha encourages participants in our programme of girls empowerment to own the project. That is why presentation by girls themselves at local and national seminars and local meetings are important to us. It adds to their self confidence and is part of their leadership program. A seminar on Marginalised Adolescent Girls’ Agency in Empowerment Strategies and Models was held last month in Mumbai in which social workers and girls from different parts of India participated. Girls had their own space separate as well as within the main presentations.

The girls were asked to think of the topic in context of their family, their community/ neighbourhood and the NGO working with them. Girls talked of restrictions to mobility, lack of understanding of and receptivity to girls’ perceptions by elders. They shared their experience of having to always compromise, being subjected to abusive language and lack of appreciation from family and imposition of orthodox and outdated customs and traditions. They felt they should work on themselves for being more communicative and courageous and to use tactics and also strategise to be able to negotiate with elders and others in power. They expected NGOs to deal with families and communities to get a better deal for girls.

Sabah Again:

Among the stories we have shared is one about Sabah, a past graduate of Vacha’s programme who is from a conservative family. The Hindus of various castes who have also moved to Mumbai in search of livelihood from Hindi belt in North also tend to be very conservative and women maintain purdah/veil in its sari version. Sabah gets along with her peers in both communities. Recently a major foundation chose her story and created an oversized poster to emphasise need for girls’ empowerment. That poster is part of the report.

Giving Tuesday:

It was towards the end of 2011 that the GlobalGiving began to help us collect donations from individuals to assure our work of imparting hard and soft skills to girls from poor families continues.  Your contributions go a long way in supporting our work. We appeal to your generosity to donate to us on Giving Tuesday so that today’s girls emerge as strong women who will not be subjected to violence and discrimination.  Our sincere thanks for the support.

You will be happy to learn that 41 girls in a very poor slum in a semi rural area adjoining the city have encouraged their mothers and brothers and their friends to campaign for clean and adequate number of public toilets for women and girls. There are 4 toilets for 5000 women. The unofficial number is higher. Some of the toilets are worse than the others due to broken doors, window or commodes. Often girls would be late for their school due to long queues to answer nature’s call. The queues are long and it is highly problematic if one has a stomach upset. In slums families hardly ever have indoor toilets. The girls in Vacha’s empowerment programme met their community’s representative in the local self govt. body. Actually the position is held notionally by her but her father has been a leader for a long time and his writ still runs. Girls and their mothers collected signatures in the area and made a presentation asking to repair toilets and build more. The leader was livid. He had never seen anything like this. He could not imagine teens would question his authority. The first thing he did was to cancel his permission for us to use a public space for learning sessions that was under his management and control. By that time the community had become supportive to us and another man with access to another useful space allowed us to run our centre from there. Girls also feel encouraged by our govt.’s strong support for toilets for all and argue from this position.

Girls, mothers and supportive boys and young men had made a survey and taken out a rally in their area. Then they approached Municipality and found out substantial amount of money had been sanctioned and provided of the elected leader to meet urgent needs of the community. After girls’ presentation one single toilet has been repaired, one that is nearest to her/his office in the area. Girls have now presented the case as a health issue in the relevant public department. They are not going to give up the issue. Your good wishes are requested. You have been giving us support through your donations. That is an ongoing process and we are grateful to you for it. This time our need is for your wishes for these girls to succeed in their mission. After all, they have come up to this level of leadership due to support from people like you.