Protect girls from violence in school

Ayesha is 24 years old, and has been involved in our project for one year.  As a result of our intervention, she has started to earn a living by selling blouses and other clothes she has produced. 

Ayesha is from a Pardhi tribal community living on the outskirts of Amravati. Pardhis suffer from severe discrimination as the community has the unfortunate reputation of being criminal by birth it's extremely difficult for them to integrate into mainstream society. For Ayesha and her friends it has been a unique experience that the project team invited them into their house. They are normally never invited by non-Pardhi people or engage with people outside of their community.

This has built confidence and a feeling of acceptance in the group of Pardhi women. Ayesha has changed a lot in the one year of participating in the training. Her family income comes from the traditional caste-based work of producing alcohol and from begging. More and more Ayesha has expressed that she doesn't want to continue with this. She is eager to earn a living which is not humiliating and harming. Being a clever young woman she learnt sewing clothes very quickly. Now Ayesha has started to take dress-making orders which increases her income. She has even initiated the same training in her community. She has learnt so swiftly that she can now even pass her knowledge on. With the help of the project, she builds herself up as a teacher for other women. Now there is one sewing class run by her in her community location supported by the project.

Ayesha is better educated than most of her community. She has finished 12 years of schooling which is unusual. This helps her to set up a small business on her own and also to teach other women. She is very keen to expand more and more so that her family no longer needs to pursue humiliating ways of income generation. 

She is a role model for other women and encourages them to participate in the course. And of course she is also encouraging education for girls in the community.

Manisha’s education has been very limited. Although she attended school up to 10^th standard she could only acquire a basic grasp of the curriculum which was not enough to get a proper job. This has left her with very low confidence and a packed schedule of doing all the household chores in her in-law family. She was serving 10 people by cooking and cleaning for them day in day out. Manisha had been married as a teenager of 16 years which left her particularly vulnerable. She had to ask for money whenever she needed something for herself and even for her children, a humiliating experience. No surprise that her confidence decreased even further.

Of course, her fate is typical for an Indian woman and she didn’t question it. She had no right to take any decision for herself but she was responsible to serve all family members just like a slave. Anyway, her work was taken for granted and she didn’t feel respected as a family member at all.

After a few years into her marriage her brother in law married. It was a revelation for Manisha that his wife was working as a tailor. Thus, she was not depending on her husband and therefore she enjoyed more respect in the family. At the same time Manisha faced a lot of humiliation because she was less educated and was not earning anything. This made Manisha to think about her life. When she came to know about the tailoring and fashion design training organized by Bahujan Hitay project Amravati she wanted to attend this. Unfortunately, it was a long struggle for her to be allowed by her family to join. They didn’t want her to go anywhere for the training. After a long consultation from the team eventually the in-laws let her attend.

Now Manisha is earning INR 6,000 per month which she decides about. Of course most of her income benefits her children. She is a good example for all those women who are spending their whole life in serving their family but who receive little respect or dignity in turn. But Manisha changed her situation. Now she is confident and happy that with the help of the project she could turn her fate around. And the household chores? I have to ask her how this is now shared...