Providing Life Skills to 300 Girls living in Slums

Mannu (the name changed on request) is one of our programme participants in Netivli-patrupul area. Netivli is an old village that is now turning in to a basti (slum) with influx of poor people from other states seeking a livelihood in nearby townships. Within this area is Patri pul, a locality of over 15 thousand families living in shanty rooms made entirely from patri i.e. tin sheets. It gets terribly hot in afternoons. The area now comes under Kalyan-Dombivli Municipal Corporation, in Thane district adjoining Mumbai. Vacha has worked here for 8 years on girls’ issues, last two without any grant. We had hired a patri room for our work but had to leave due to a demand from the room owner. Fortunately, we now have support from a corporate body and have been able to hire a small room in residential building. We had functioned from any available space anywhere in the area for months until then. The girls’ response has been tremendously good. Mannu is one such girl participant. She is about 15 years old.

We had bought stationary to store in the new place. We had never got anything stolen from anywhere in last 30 years. This time it was different. Our community organizer had stamped ‘Vacha’ on each of the items. Mannu saw such a stamped painting brush with a young cousin who said some older boys were distributing stationery to young children. Mannu located and confronted them at home. They got scolding and sometimes beatings from parents. With their help Mannu visited each and every home where beneficiaries of stolen stationary lived and recovered the entire batch. This could have been dangerous. The boys’ parents could have denied the accusation and fought with her; the boys themselves could waylay and attack her. There might be derision in the community at her bold steps. She risked all this and managed to regain our lost stationary and brought the miscreants, a few 12 or 13 year old, to Vacha office. They apologized and showed how the theft had taken place.

Mannu had learnt life skills like confrontation, cooperation, negotiation and speaking out at our course on soft and hard skills. She was active in girl centred community work and in leadership training workshops. But the spunk and courage were all her own. We salute her.