No matter how talented and ambitious she is, the girl child often receives the shorter end of the stick. In fear of exploitation and abuse, many girls are not sent to school and kept at home only to be married off early. And even if she is not married off, the young girl is still denied a deserving education, quality healthcare, employment opportunities and equal rights that a boy easily gets. While some girls manage to ‘escape’ from the shackles and try to build a bright future, most resign to their ill fate.
Working extensively to provide support to girls and children with disabilities, Samidha Foundation has been working in the area of girls education for the last three years. In this interview with Youth Ki Awaaz, its founder Karishma Mehrotra talks about working in the area of girls’ education and the role community and government can play in improving girls’ access to education.
Ananya Kakar (AK) : Can you tell us a bit about the Samidha Foundation.
Karishma Mehrotra (KM): Though Samidha was registered as a non-governmental organization 3 years ago, we have been up and running for 2 years now. We started in 2021 and on the 9th day we had the first two admissions enrolled in the organization), but since then the number has been increasing. We are currently a home to 50 plus girls in the age group of 5-18 years. Our main goal is to educate them through the various resources we have. For example, if a child is coming to the city for the first time from a village, we will not directly enroll that child in a private school because there is usually a language barrier there.In addition, many schools also have entrance examinations which the child would not be able to crack at times. So, we first enroll that child in a government school to form a base and get them acquainted. Once that’s done, we send them to a private school. We are associated with 3-4 schools as of now, and are planning to tie up with more schools with an increase in admissions.
Apart from that, once they come back from school, we also conduct tuitions for them.
AA: Why do you think it is important to work on the issue of girls’ access to education?
KM: I think that education of the girl child is a very important issue in our culture. India is a developing country but in many parts of the country, people don’t view education of the girl child as important. People think that girls are only an object for marriage, so education is not given any importance.Yet, if given a chance, girls have proven that they are in perfect competition with men. If girls are given a chance, they are not limited to just being a wife or raising a family. Education for a girl is just as important as it is for a boy.
AA: What are the challenges you have faced in running an organization in this area?
KM: It is certainly not easy. The kids that I have here come from very different backgrounds. They have faced so much trauma and have seen so much damage in their homes, be it the relationship of their parents or the surroundings. So, we have to un-condition all of that and then put new things in their minds, so all of this is very tough.
A child sometimes takes a lot of time to open up as well, so we have to give them a lot of love and earn a lot of trust from them so that they open themselves up layer by layer. Our main goal is to raise good humans.
AA: Many times, even if education is free, we have seen that parents are resistant to send their girls to school, due to safety concerns and a conservative mindset. How do you think that we as a whole community can change that?
KM: I think that it will take some time to get results from all the things that we as a community have been doing in this regard. I will give you my personal experience here. This has happened to me with 3-4 little girls whom I was keen on keeping in the residential school to ease access to education.But the parents were resistant and wanted their girls to take care of their siblings instead. So education for the eldest child who is sometimes the oldest girl is especially not considered since she is seen as the caretaker of the other kids that they have in the family. Because of this, the child loses opportunities.
A lot of parents also want to keep their children here (at the residential school) but do not want us to provide them with education because they have been conditioned to think that education is not important at all. We are doing our bit by contributing knowledge to these parents and I am sure that there are thousands of people out there who are doing the same. We just have to take it one day at a time.
AA:When it comes to enabling girls access to education, what are some issues you feel the government needs to address?
KM: A basic thing that we definitely need to look into is improving the condition of government schools in our states. We enroll children in both government schools and private schools through our organization.
But in government schools, usually, one finds that the teachers and caretakers are extremely rigid and aren’t thinking about the child’s future. Exceptions do exist, but that is largely the scenario, which is why, once they have studied for some time in a government school, we try and enrol them in a private school. I want children to have exposure to the right kind of education. Because I see that most children spend their whole life in these government school’s and if you give them a first or second grade book to read, they would simply not be able to read! Then what has the child done in the school?
This is clearly an area that needs to be improved upon from the government’s side. They have built the schools but have not been able to provide the necessary system to run them properly for the benefit of the children. I have personal experiences of children coming from villages and when we try admitting them into government schools, the principal is so rigid about the paper work of the child that they refuse to give the child an opportunity to grow and get educated. We need to give opportunities to students that knock at the door.