By Debadutta Dash | Board Member, Sukarya USA
The inspiring story of Barira's transformation from being shy to be a social change of agent has influenced many lives in and outside the Neemtala slum of Gurgaon. Like many others, her family migrated to Gurgaon from West Bengal in search of better livelihood opportunities. At 15, as the eldest child in the family, she looked after her four siblings while her father worked as a rickshaw puller and mother as a domestic help. Throughout the day she had to make many compromises with her childhood wishes while go through adverse social conditions such as neglect, abuse, harassment and deprivation.
But the change was to happen. Barira joined Sukarya's training program ARSH which stands for Adolescents Reproductive & Sexual Health and FLE – Family life education. These programs run exclusively for the adolescent girls from the slums. The training session made Barira open up and display keen interest in learning every topic and participating in all activities. She was naturally curious to learn new things and came up with questions related to the topics of the training and gradually emerged as a leader and gradually became a very confident girl during the training sessions.
Today Barira is a youth leader for the programs in her community and speaks passionately for the tremendous efforts that were put in through the trainings for her new level of confidence. With her determination she wishes to reshape the life of other girls by leading through her own example helping them overcome the situations of vulnerability they live everyday with. Barira has gathered the courage to fight the social barriers of the community and help her parents change their mindset. Today her parents have become a source of motivation for her to pursue others to be regular for their training and stay connected with the program to overcome challenges within and outside their community.
During the period August - October, 6 training program were organized (2 training sessions are conducted for adolescent girls each month on ARSH- Adolescent Reproductive and Sexual Health and FLE- Family Life Education). 2 slum locations were covered and 100 girls participated in the program.
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