ROURKELA: When the Covid-19 pandemic broke the economic backbone of Madhumita’s family last year, the 16-year-old was forced to discontinue her studies in Class X. The family wanted to marry her off but the teenager from Bankibahal village in Sadar block firmly resisted.
Behind Madhumita’s fight was Humara Bachpan Trust (HBT) which counselled the young girl and convinced her father to call off the marriage. She is now back to Bargard Ashram School and leading a fight against child marriage in her area.
In Hemgir, a mining block of tribal-dominated Sundargarh district, over 3,024 women trained with transformational life skills between November 2020 and June 2021 to improve their psychosocial competencies, interpersonal skill sets, employability and entrepreneurial abilities by HBT have a new found confidence about lives and how they want to lead it.
Nirupama Besan, a landless woman of Kiripsira village, is the primary bread-earner for her family of two children and a physically-challenged husband. “At times, it was difficult to feed all of them. On other days, earning from sale of Mahua flowers would spare the family pangs of starvation,” the 33-year-old recalls.
She enrolled herself in the training programme, learnt about saving, acquired problem-solving, time management and professional skills. She collected paddy straws and with HBT’s assistance, started mushroom cultivation to support her family and her economic condition improved gradually.
For its women empowerment project, HBT tied up with Sundargarh District Periphery Development Society (SDPDS) and Dulunga Coal Mining Project of NTPC. The training modules using Gap Inc’s Personal Advancement and Career Enhancement programme focused on empowering women to build their lives by improving their general, social, cognitive, professional and entrepreneurial skills. Jayanti Naik who not only had to fight penury that manifested in anger and aggressive behaviour, the training came as a huge support. She received training on communication, stress management and coping mechanisms and is now into poultry farming.
The list of women who have witnessed a gradual transformation in their lives is long. “Life skill training is a key driving agent of women empowerment. Economic independence is not a sufficient condition for empowerment and social, political and cultural power balance is equally necessary. Our programme provides women skills to enhance their abilities to plan, use available resources, face challenges and participate in the decision-making process,” founder chairperson of HBT Dharitri Patnaik says.
The non-profit organisation, in association with the district administration, is running a similar training programme for adolescent girls in Tangarpali, Lefripada and Sadar blocks where between October 2020 and September 2021, about 6,077 girls have been covered. They are taught verbal and non-verbal communication, effective anatomy, puberty and menstruation, aspiration mapping and goal setting, identify different forms of violence, leadership skill, management of time, stress, work and money besides conduct and attitude at work.
Three organisations have joined hands to empower women of rural Sundargarh to build their lives by improving general, social, cognitive, professional and entrepreneurial skills. Prasanjeet Sarkar finds out more