By Amrita De | Project Coordinator
Dear Friends,
It has been a fun-filled summer for girls here at Vacha. This is the time when schools have vacations for almost two months. Many girls participating in Vacha programmes are migrants, so during the summer vacations, they travel to their villages and spend time with their relatives. Those who remained with us had lot of fun in workshops and special events. One such activity we had was art and craft workshops in schools and communities right after the year-end exams. Girls were in the mood to relax after their hectic exam schedules and these workshops were an enjoyable experience. 110 girls took part in these workshops. Some of them learnt to create ornaments like earrings and hand bracelets using paper, others learnt the art of origami and some girls used their artistic skills to make posters about their rights.
A great opportunity came by our girls where they got to attend a live cricket match of the ‘Indian Premiere League’ cricket series. Cricket is much loved throughout the country and it is no different for our girls. They are not allowed to play out door games after they reach puberty, but they follow the matches on t.v. All the girls were hugely excited when they got to know of this opportunity to attend a live match. This opportunity came by as part of the CSR project of one of the cricket teams – Mumbai Indians. All the participating girls were given team t-shirts, caps, and a bag of cricket-themed goodies. Girls in the bastis are not usually allowed to wear t-shirts, so most of them wore them on their Indian clothes. It was a once-in-a-lifetime experience for them to be inside the stadium and cheer for their favourite cricketers.
Girls from this project have contributed to a collection of stories about their menstruation experiences, titled Puberty, Poverty and Gender – Girls speak about Menstruation. This was released on May 28th, observed as International Day of Action for Women’s Health as well as Menstruation Hygiene Day by organizations around the world.
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