BHUBANESWAR: In less than a month, two child marriages have been stopped in Badajhad and Sadaksahi villages under Kaptipada block of Mayurbhanj district. Also, almost all families including adolescent boys and girls in both the villages have pledged not to support such marriages - an initiative that never happened so far.
A 10-member team led by sarpanch of Devla gram panchayat in Kaptipada block Bhim Charan Singh and an assistant teacher of government upgraded high school in Badajhad village Santosh Kumar Sahu has been able to achieve the feat through an initiative 'Udaya' which it launched on May 7.
It hopes to create awareness against the social evil in the entire Devla panchayat having 11 villages within the next few days. "Our initiative Udaya means a new beginning. We want this to be a new start from our gram panchayat which has been witnessing child marriages, high dropout rate and even cases of child labour. We are working towards making Devla a child-friendly panchayat," said the sarpanch who brought together eight other persons to work on the initiative.
They are naib sarpanch Rajani Singh; Pratap Telenga, headmaster of Sadaksahi Primary School, ASHA worker Mahini Behera, social activist Ashish Kumar Mallick, an adolescent girl Champa Singh and boy Gamha Singh besides, SHG workers Satyabhama Naik and Anupama Singh.
Singh said the initiative came as a necessity to weed out rampant child marriages in the villages which result out of poverty and lack of awareness. "There are many like-minded people who were working towards preventing such marriages at their personal level but when it did not yield much results, Sahu and I decided to bring them all together to work in this direction. All of them have good networks throughout the panchayat which helps us reach out to more and more people within a short span of time," said the sarpanch.
Currently, the team is organising awareness camps in all schools of the panchayat on the evils of child marriage and its legal consequences. Sahu said in the last one month, they have been able to stop two child marriages before they could be solemnised.
While counselling their parents, the team members came to know that the marriages were fixed due to poverty. "The girls are usually considered a burden by families. Although their parents send them to schools, the girls eventually drop out for many reasons. The biggest reason being early marriages," said the teacher.
The team members have distributed their phone numbers among all villagers of Badajhad and Sadaksahi and nine other villages as a result of which, people coming across incidents of child marriages are informing them much in advance.
Currently, the team is also on the job to identify school dropouts and child labourers in the area. For the purpose, they along with ASHA and anganwadi workers have recently launched a door-to-door survey in the panchayat.
According to official reports, 6 child marriages were foiled in the last one year. CDPO of Kaptipada Diptimayee Puthal said that after launch of Udaya initiative, people are learning about the consequences of such marriages on their daughters.