By Sonal Shukla | Managing Director
Dear Friends,
January is a very busy month at Vacha because of the Indian Republic Day is on January 26. This is the day when the Constitution of India became operative in 1950 though Independence from the British was attained in August 1947. A newsletter is published by each of the 17 neighbourhoods where Vacha’s youth programmes are implemented. Since rights of citizens are enshrined in the Constitution, it is essential that girls assert their right to self expression. This comes out in form of their essays, reports and photographs in form of newsletter content. The newsletters are edited by their own committees.
Bandra Plot was one such community where girls decided to raise the issue of access to public toilets this time. The area is called Bandra Plot because a lot of people from the suburb Bandra had settled here after their hutment colonies in Bandra were demolished by authorities. It is actually at the back of Jogeshwari’s down market area. Their small one room homes not having toilets, the public facility is crucial to their daily life. Participants in our girls’ project prepared posters on the issue and took our a rally moving through small lanes that crisscross the area. The novelty was double fold for the locals. They had not seen girls marching through streets and they had never imagined they would speak about such things as their right to pee and defecate in clean toilets in safe surroundings. This was almost a tabooed subject. How did girls get courage to articulate it so publicly, it was felt. But this is precisely the topic girls had decided to cover in their newsletter. Not only that, girls performed a short street play on this topic in five different places 44 girls had participated in the march and the rally and 616 local residents signed to support their demands. It was a major achievement as all this happened in a fairly conservative area.
In several other areas girls’ groups presented a cultural programme after flag hoisting. They made speeches and invited local leaders or a girl’s parent to release their newsletters. The newsletters were later sold to general public.
Glimpse of the Nesletters: http://www.vacha.org.in/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Glimpses-of-Newsletter-Jan-2015.pdf
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