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In many rural areas, adolescent girls face various challenges such as early forced marriages and restrictions on their mobility and education. To address these issues and promote gender equality, a Kabaddi team consisting of adolescent girls and boys has been formed in the intervention villages.
This Kabaddi team serves as a platform for promoting women’s rights, gender equality, and preventing early forced marriages. Through this team, adolescent girls can engage in physical activity, build self-confidence, and develop teamwork skills. Moreover, the participation of adolescent boys in the team promotes gender equality and encourages them to support girls in their communities.
386 families live in a village and masonry and cloth vending are the major employments. There are 120 adolescent girls and boys, mostly going to schools and colleges. There is anadolescent girls’ group in the village that has 20 active members. The village also has an adolescent boys group.
All the students regularly attend the evening resource centrerun by SPEECH. Here, as well as studying, the children learn about traditional games and martial art forms. They are very motivated to understand the traditional games. Every Saturday they try to play one of the traditional games described in a book provided by SPEECH. One of these games is Silambamwhich is a martial art used as a self-defence.
India’s lockdown closed businesses and services, to combat Covid-19. The pandemic disproportionally affected the lives of poor families, like Poongavanam’s. She lives in a small under-served village in Tiruchuli with her husband and two children. Her husband is a daily wage labourer and they have no other source of income to run their family. Both the children go to the Anganwadi every day, where they can get their lunch. During the pandemic, the Anganwadiwas closed due to the fear of infecting the childrenso this stopped the children getting nutritious balanced food.
Due to this lockdown, the family could only get relief supplies provided at the ration shop (PDS).Poongavanam was very upset that the children could not get enough nutritious food. For families like this, SPEECH provided additional cereals and pulses to boost the immunity of children.
Poongavanam said “The nutritious food supplied as relief for the benefit of the children was extremely useful for that time when both myself and my husband were jobless”. She expressed heartfelt gratitude for the concern with the welfare of the children.