Shaping Future of Adolescent Girls inLucknow Slums

Afsana belongs to a poor family. She passed standard seventh and was keen to study further but decision of her family deterred her. She stopped going to school. People around her would always say that there is no worth in a girl studying further, because she only has to do household work in her house or at her in laws.All this talk weakened her desire to study further and she dropped the idea to study and decided to abide by the will of her parents.Community Resource Centre for life skill education for school dropout girls and behaviour change counselling of her parents were instrumental in Afsana’s empowerment and her re-admission in eighth standard. Afsana was very motivated by her learning at CRC and this led her to make the decision to study again. Afsana represents a large number (38%) of 10 -19 years old out of school adolescent girls living in poverty stricken slums of Lucknow.

Our project has evolved into a powerful model in creating a fertile environment for the empowerment of adolescent girls in an urban slum context. Project is placing adolescent girl issues like child marriage, low education levels, discriminatory behaviours, domestic violence, lack of access to development services at the heart of ground-level development. During the quarter from June to August 2018, we focused on encouraging education among school drop- out girls through life skill education and behaviour change counselling of parents while building capacities of community volunteers, adolescent girls groups and child reporters at community level.

We started four community resource canters for life skill education to  117 school drop adolescent girls and strengthened adolescent girls groups having 1290 adolescent girls as members for self advocacy and behavioural change communication on their issues like child marriage, gender discriminatory practices, girl’s education. 60 child reporters were trained on writing stories for advocacy and communication and feedback on the  issues like child marriage, school drop- out girls, domestic violence, sanitation, condition of schools, alcohol drinking affecting them , their families, community schools and surrounding. 204 community volunteers were guided  and actively engaged in social & behaviour change communication, mainstreaming of drop out girls with schools, providing feedback to local governance institutions and government service providers  on government service provisions including  education, health, sanitation facilities, mid day meal in schools. Community volunteers visited 1385 households for behaviour change counselling on the issues like ending child marriage, sending their girls to schools, sanitation and hygiene practices. Sixty two women self help groups were facilitated to enhance women participation and their own financial resources through small savings to address their own and family requirements. Growing participation and communication of adolescent girls indicates change in social norms and behaviours of parents and community towards girls. It is reflected in re-enrolment of 55 drop out adolescent girls in public schools after a gap of 1 to 5 years, prevention of drop out of school going girls, participation of  117 drop out adolescent girls in life skill education, prevention of child marriages and building linkages of 745 adolescent girls and linked with health and nutrition services like immunisation and IFA tablets.

We are grateful to GlobalGiving and all our donors for continued support to bring change among most disadvantaged adolescent girls  in resource poor slums. We are confident to scale and enrich our impact driven strategies with your support.