By Sonal Shukla | Hon. Director and Managing Trustee
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compromise, being subjected to abusive language and lack of appreciation from family and imposition of orthodox and outdated customs and traditions.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.
Project reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.
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