"Pink Bags" scholarships for young girls

The coronavirus pandemic is affecting more and more people around the globe and, besides the health emergency, significant issues are becoming apparent, particularly at the economic and social level. In an effort to prevent the virus to spread, many countries declared preventive lockdown, which is helping on one side to reduce the impact of Covid-19 on people’s health and therefore on health systems, but on the other side is dramatically affecting millions of people, especially among the most vulnerable ones. As a consequence of lockdown, in fact, the informal sector in which most poor workers operate has been particularly affected: many people depend on daily labor and lost their sources of petty earnings with which they used to feed their families, others lost their employment especially in the private sector, many small-scale industries closed down, and there was an increase in the prices of essential goods, which made it even more difficult for households to cope with this new dramatic situation. Most of them do not have savings nor, in many cases, the possibility to store commodities for the next day and are relying on loans from neighbors or pawn shops.

In India and Bangladesh, countries in which Mission Bambini Foundation has been working since 20 years in partnership with several local organizations, the social and economic effects of the Covid-19 pandemic are huge and risk to undermine decades of successes in local development and particularly having regard to the most vulnerable people in the community, namely poor women and girls. In 2018, according to the latest statistics by the UNESCO Institute for Statistics, in the world, 129.2 million girls were out of school. In Southern Asia, in particular, girls are disadvantaged for almost all levels of education. The coronavirus pandemic is likely to have a huge impact on them, with an increased risk of sexual exploitation, early pregnancy and forced marriage. The economic hardships caused by the crisis will likely induce some families to invest less in girls' education beside increasing their domestic and caring responsibilities.

STORIES OF HOPE

Ruma M.  is the daughter of Arun Mondal in a poor family of Balia village of Kheshra union under Tala Upazilla ofSatkhira district. She is a student of HSC 2^nd year of Shalikha Degree College. Her father is a van puller and her mother Sumati M. also works as a day laborer. Ruma helps her mother with household work as well as her study. The member in their family is four. Ruma  gets stipend from Dalits in every month, which she spends on her study. Her wish is that she will study up to her master's degree. After finishing her studies, she will get a job and remove the troubles of her parents.