Protect girls from violence in school

Among the most marginalised people in India are tribal communities. They live in spots separate from other slum dwellers. It hasn't been easy for the Bahujan Hitay project team to include women from the tribal Pardhi community. During the first weeks of building rapport with the community the team was hardly welcome at all. With patience and perseverance they have now reached out to a group of women who participate in a sewing class. The social situation of these women is pathetic even in the Indian context. Being marginalised and discriminated against for centuries women of this community face extreme oppression also by their male family members. It’s the task of women and children to beg in trains and at cross roads in the cities. Women always need to have a baby with them to appeal to people for donations which increases the birth rate. The habit of begging means of course that children miss out on school a lot. Hardly any Pardhi woman has finished school, most drop out after a few years. The women are denied all own decision making, the families decide when and whom they have to marry. Child marriages are common and most women deliver first as teenagers. They also have no choice for their health or pregnancies. The custom requires that they deliver on their own without skilled birth attendance let alone hospital. Thereafter they are considered impure for 7 days during which they are secluded on their own with their new born. By this the death rate for both mothers and babies is much higher than the Indian average.

This is the background on which a group of 10 Pardhi women has over the course of months managed to be allowed the attendance of a sewing class. The BH Amravati team has decided to not run the class in the hamlet as they normally do but to bring the women into their training centre. It means an exposure to a completely new world for these women who are never allowed into other communities’ houses and who live in filthy unhygienic huts surrounded by rubbish. Abhayanavita, the project leader says: "After a couple of visits the women became cleaner and more carefully dressed. They enjoy the training and the exchange with the team which also includes counselling." Now the team can visit the hamlet and will be invited to stay instead of straight being chased away.

It will need much more patience to help the women change their lives for the better. It’s the first step to work with this difficult to access community which has been neglected and overlooked for long.