On the border of the Indian states of Haryana and Rajasthan sits a small, rural and very remote village of Mirzapur that claims they found enlightenment -– enlightenment from education. I was fortunate to visit this village last week.
It’s a 5 hour drive to reach Mirzapur from Delhi along the highway and dirt roads packed with cars, trucks, 3-wheeled “autos”, motorcycles, bicycles, cows, camels and many, many people. We are being taken into this protected Muslim community with Room to Read’s partner organization Alwar Mewat Institute of Education and Development (AMIED) who encouraged this once illiterate and uneducated community to support education and particularly, girls’ education. They have found success -– since India gained independence 60 years ago, this will be the first generation of girls to attend school in this community.
In Rajasthan alone, Room to Read’s Girls Education program works in five districts and supports over 800 girls through five partner organizations. In partnership with AMIED, Room to Read helps close to 200 girls remain in school -– some of those girls attend a pilot “bridge course” which tutors those forced to drop out of school and helps assimilate them back into school by catching them up with the mainstream curriculum. When we visited the Mirzapur bridge course, we met over 40 young girls who are desperately trying to find their way back into school.
I saw one girl -- possibly 12 years old with a small infant and wondered if this was her own. No, it was explained: this girl brings her baby brother to the course because she is responsible for taking care of him and if this means she has to bring him to school, that is what she does. The teachers in the course encourage this; they encourage anything to help these girls transition back into the school system.
It’s not just the financial struggle for the family that keeps girls out of school. Even more so in Rajasthan, it is cultural barriers among the Muslim communities that gave this community a statistic of a 0% literacy rate among women. Girls are not encouraged to study and if there is school, it was typically taught by religious leaders outside of the mainstream school system. But AMIED would not hear of this and a few years ago began an underground movement to ingratiate themselves into this community and start a “wave of enlightenment” -– starting with the men of Mizapur and teaching them the value of education. AMIED felt if they could just convince one of the stronghold Muslim communities to change their ways, they would act as a model for others in the region who would want to follow their lead. And, it’s been working!
We sat with the men’s educational council who explained after many years they have recognized the value of education and feel comfortable with girls attending school because they have trust that it will help their community in the long run. Just four years ago before the campaign began, only fifteen children attended the local primary school – all of them boys and since 1952, only 20 men in all had graduated. Now, after AMIED’s campaign and with Room to Read’s support, there are 575 children in the school and 275 of them are girls and with so many students attending, they built a secondary school so students could continue their learning! In fact, we met Rajbala, the first girl ever in this community to complete 8th grade and she is now being treated as the local celebrity. She told us, “when I graduate, I hope to become a teacher and give back to my community who has provided me this opportunity.”
-- Rebecca Hankin
happy to see the efforts.keep it up and spread in all over the country.congratulations.
dr.rajani kant
director
human welfare association.
varanasi
hwavaranasi.org
hwa@rediffmail.com
Posted by: dr.rajani kant | Jan 17, 2010 at 10:43 AM
In order that people may be happy in their work,these things are needed:they must be fit for it; they must not do much of it; and they must have a sense of success in it. Do you understand?
Posted by: jordan 1 flight low | Jul 26, 2010 at 01:16 AM