In a recent heated debate on women safety, a spirited woman anchor told a politician that she and for that matter all women, were not anyone’s daughters or sisters or wives. She wanted to be considered simply as a citizen enjoying the same constitutional rights!
A recent article entitled: There’s more to women than being betis and biwis, seconds that statement. Recently two young diplomats, who also happen to be women, were feted for their spirited defence of India at the UN. For the author and for man of us women, these remarks reek of patriarchy. We are sick of hearing politicians spout ‘our daughters’, or ‘just like our daughters’ when any issue concerning women is discussed be it safety or even rape.
Different rules are set up in universities for the so called daughters as it seems that they ‘need’ to be protected! Patriarchy seems to follow women no matter what they do or how high they reach. The sickening ‘in spite of being a woman’ is galling.
As long as this attitude remains, nothing is going to really change.
Women want to be considered as equal partners and so if the roads are safe for men, they should be for women too. We do not want to be talked down too or clubbed as the weaker sex.We want to be treated and recognised as professionals minus the ‘even though they are women”.
Nobel Laureate Kailash Satyarthi’s launched a ‘Bharat Yatra’ against child abuse on Monday with the words: “Each time when a child is raped, our conscience, innocence is raped. I am not going to tolerate this. I am going to change this.”
The sad reality is that a child is raped with regularity in this land of ours. Children are raped within he safety of their homes or school. Just last week a 5 year old was murdered in a prestigious school in India’s capital city. In another horrific incident a minor was gang raped by the school owner and a teacher for months. The incident came to light after a botched up abortion organised by the perps. She is critical.
Nothing has changed in spite of public outrage following the Nirbhaya gang rape. Children are still being raped with impunity. Some cases make the headlines. But others remain cloaked in silence, a silence often linked to misplaced family honour. Rapes remain in the closet. It is time they were brought out in the open.
Madhumita Pandey is a student in criminology. For her doctoral thesis she interviewed over 100 rapists. This was prompted by the question she and each one of us ask ourselves: “Why do these men do what they do?” and then goes on to ask: “what prompts these men? What are the circumstances which produce men like this?” This is something we all want to know. Madhumita set out to find out from the horse’s mouth.
It is easy to call all such rapists ‘monsters’! To bung them in a category that has nothing to do with us. To think of them as some aliens from another planet. Anything else makes us uncomfortable. But that is not the reality. The reality is that they come from within our society. How can one forget that 90% of child sexual and other abuse is committed by people within the family or extended family.
When she interviewed the rapists in jail she realised that most of them are ordinary men, with little education, often school drop outs and what they did was related to the way they were brought up. Boys are given false ideas about their gender and most if not all the women they interact with are submissive. Consent is not part of their lexicon. Gender equality is an aberration.
Let us pause a little and look around us and ponder on the day-to-day reality of children growing up in what is undoubtedly a patriarchal society. Children are brought up in an environment where boys and girls are looked at up differently. If one is king, the other is more a slave! In school sex education has been obliterated as such topics corrupt the young and offend traditional values. All conversation about anything related to ‘sex’ is taboo. Never minds if hormones rage or if the young access the mine of information now available at the swipe of hand on the ubiquitous smart pone.
Rape should it occur, is quickly brushed aside with a boys will be boys, or he had too much to drink, or why was she out at night, or the ever present family honour. One cannot begin to imagine how many cases of child sexual abuse are brushed under the carpet to guard family honour.
So what needs to be done. First accept that the real cause lies within our society and that it needs to be addressed head on. Sex education has to come back on school curricula asap! Young children have to be taught to say NO! They have to be taught ‘good’ touch and ‘bad‘ touch and have to be heard. It is imperative to give children a voice. And it is imperative to respect that voice. Even a sex worker has the right to say NO!
A child needs to have an adult it trusts and can go to in case of need. If not someone in the family, then a teacher or care giver. A loud NO the first time any such dastardly incident occurs is all it needs to stop any further abuse.
Perhaps it is too late to change the well ingrained mindset of adults. Let us at least strive to make the next generation aware of gender equality and consent.
I recently stumbled upon an article entitled: India’s education system is broken beyond fixing; we need to reimagine it entirely. It caught my attention as this is something close to my heart. The author refers to education as being a ‘terror outfit!’. It kills an average of 20 teenagers everyday due to academic pressure. For her the indian education system is nothing short of calamitous.
She retraces the origin of the education as we know it today and quotes an interesting excerpt of a TED talk that sums it all: “The schooling system as it is today goes back to 400 years of an empire’s colonisation and this empire needed three kinds of people: Soldiers to protect their land interest, clerks to run their offices and, after the industrial revolution, assembly line workers to make things. So for 400 years we produced millions and millions of people like them and what are the properties of those people? They should be able to understand instructions, follow them and most importantly, they should not ask questions and they should not be creative. Imagine if an assembly line worker started being creative! o produce millions of such people, what the empire basically needed was a system that kind of worked like a factory. You take raw materials, subject all of them to exactly the same processes and conditions and finally test them. The finished products that clear the test are ready to be sold and the remaining products are simply passed off as defects. The empire managed to build such a system and a very efficient one that: The schooling system.
And we have been nurturing this system for four centuries. This system is obsolete and cannot be fixed. It has to be re-imagined. In tomorrow’s world where AI will reign and robots proliferate, such products will be jobless. In India the number is staggering: 600 million in a scenario where 68% of the jobs will be sacrificed at the alter of automation.
Who will bell the cat, or will anyone bell the cat. Without sounding alarmist, it is imperative someone look at this in time.
The question remains as to whether we can ‘fix’ the system as we know it. First and foremost ne can of course try and ensure that the system as we know it works as in many ways it does not. Over the years the rot has set in and a system that once worked is now hijacked by the absurd race for marks. Maybe that is the first thing that should be addressed as it is also the cause of the many suicides we see. A couple of decades ago 60% was considered to be top of the scale. Today it is close to failure. I felt extremely disturbed when I heard a topper question why she did not get 100% in a particular subject as she has mugged the entire book by heart.
That is what we have let our education become: the art of rote learning. A child has to give up everything to mug books by heart. Our education system has hijacked everything that is the prerogative of a child: playing, singing, dancing, running, laughing, giggling, day-dreaming, having fun, being creative and above all being a person. It is time all this was reinstated.
Learning by rote is useless. Once you have regurgitated what you learnt at the given exam, you forget it all. Learning is about understanding, interpreting, reacting, giving your opinion and it is possible but is needs commitment and motivation from the teachers. I remember the question I had to answer way back in the sixties at my History exam for my Baccalauréat. It was an oral exam without any choice. The syllabus was World History from 1914 to present days. The question I got was the following: Had the Allies lost the war, what in your opinion would have been the economic situation today! There was no correct answer, you simply has to analyse what you hd learnt and give your opinion and defend it. Rote learning in this case would have got you nowhere.
This happened over half a century ago and I still remember the question and my answer. That is because we were made to comprehend what we were taught. Maybe the first step to take is to teach our children to understand what they are being taught. That would challenge every child’s independent thinking.
School curricula are being reviewed the world over. Finland seems to have got it right. Please watch this Michael Moore’s film!
I send my child to school because I believe my child will be safe.
This is undoubtedly what most parents feel when the wave goodbye to their child at the gate of the school or the school bus stand. But all changed on the fateful day when a little seven year old was brutally killed within the walls of his school. The case remains unsolved and gets murkier by the day as a cover up game is on!
The terrible crime sends chills down one’s spine. Imagine a little boy who saunters happily to school in the morning, needs to visit the loo and is brutally killed, his throat slashed. His fault? Trust. Trust that in his school he is safe. A culprit had been ‘identified’. Is he the real culprit. The sexual assault angle has been negated by the autopsy. A fact finding committee has come out with glaring lapses in security measures. The Government has stepped in and may take over the school for a period of time. The case has been taken over by the country’s leading Intelligence organisation. But all this can never bring back the little victim to life.
Today as we sit and wonder why this happened and where did we go wrong, many things come to mind. As we look back on the recent history of education in free India, what stares us in the face is its commercialisation. Education is now a business. and in business it is not the child that is the centre of attention, but the money that can be made. The equation is skewed and unless its is redressed, the likelihood of another child being hurt is very real.
The question is: how does one balance the two, or rather can one balance the two.
I have always held that education should be equitable and free for every child born in this land. Thus education should be imparted in state run neighbourhood schools where children of all walks of life should share school benches. Isn’t education meant to be an even playing field.
Sadly this is not what seems to be the chosen option. Education is a business and no matter how many checks and balances one comes up with, one has to remember that market forces dictate businesses.
Memory is short. Soon this terrible crime will be forgotten. Things will go back to what they were.
Will it take another child’s life to bring us to our senses. Let us not forget that one child dying in one child too many.
This post should have gone up a long time ago! All in perfection as it is said. Our website crashed and for almost a month we were ‘under construction’! But we are back now.
A few weeks ago we bid farewell to our dearest Carla: friend, mentor, fund raiser extraordinaire and above all the rock we needed to lean on. She came to us at a time when we needed her most and held our hands ever so gently throughout the makeover that was crucial to our existence.
The organic, from the heart, slightly topsy turvy organisation I had steered for a decade and a half had to be given a new image to meet the requirements of the world it had to now step in. It was the world of strategic plans, assessments, reports and projections in time – words we barely comprehended – and we were lost. Till date Project WHY had functioned in reverse mode: first the why that needed an answer and then the resources to meet it. In the new scenario essential for sustainability, we needed to first plan and then raise the money. Daunting to say the least. But thanks to Carla’s extreme patience and caring approach the transition was painless. The reason was that her heart beat for Project WHY and hence she never lost sight of its spirit.
We came close to losing her as the initial days were a bit choppy. We could not understand why she wanted to organise things. Mercifully the penny dropped in time and that was the beginning of the most beautiful relationship.
Through many meetings and workshops Carla introduced us to the demands of the outside world and slowly but surely we completed our makeover. I hope she is proud of what we achieved. She also was a star fund raiser who came to the rescue every time we were in need devising new ways of garnering support. Being a mean photographer she participated in the creation of a beautiful coffee table book on Delhi, the proceeds of which were donated to us. But that is not where it ended, she also commandeered the support of her family making Malte her lovely son one of the youngest donors we have as he set out to collect money with his Scout Cubs and come and paint our Okhla school. We were extremely touched when Peter her husband decided to forego his birthday presents and ask his friends to donate to his wife’s favourite charity.
Favourite charity! How lovely these words sound. And to return the compliment can we say that Carla was our favourite: friend, supporter, mentor and so much more.
We will miss her. We will miss her kind heart and her loving ways. We will miss her wise counsel. We will miss her presence.
I know she will be back! But till that day she lives in our hearts forever.
Two Angels landed in my life without any warning and changed my life forever. The first was Manu. Manu was the kind of being you pass on the street and never look at. To many he would be just a beggar who seemed deranged and bedraggled. He roamed a street I passed regularly. I often wondered what could have got him there, but it was a fleeting thought that disappeared in a trice. But one fateful day the heart rendering cry he let out as he was being riled by someone pierced my heart and soul in a way that I cannot describe in words. It was like a deafening cry for help targeted at me and demanding to be heard. I did hear it. The rest is history, something I have written about time and again. Manu was a mirror to my soul, the reason that really made me take the less travelled road. His mission as I see it was to show me the way at a time when I was somewhat confused and did not know which way to go.
All I knew at that instant was that I had to help him. How to help a beggar who roams the streets is not written in any book, you just have to find your way. And in finding my way, a larger plan enfolded called Project Why! I made myself a promise that no one knew till maybe much later. Manu would one day have a warm bed, a set of friends; would share a meal around a table, and would watch TV to his heart’s content.
To many it would have sounded ludicrous but to me it became a life and death decision. At that moment the ‘how’ and ‘when’ were of no consequence. As time passed we moved a step at a time towards a dream that rested in the recesses of my mind.
Project Why grew by leaps and bounds. Every day was better than the previous specially for Manu. He was bathed, fed and had his own bed in the veranda of what was our office. And when we launched our class for special kids, he was Roll no 1! So to some perhaps it could seem that the game was over, never mind the dining table or the TV. Not not for me. The small challenges and big ones we managed to overcome gave me the audacity to start dreaming big, too big. Was it hubris? I do not know. Maybe. The idea emerged in my mind when we began thinking about long term sustainability. While on the ground the ideas were mundane – chocolates, earthen lamps, candles, paper bags and even pongamia oil soaps – my mind was busy conjuring what came to be know as Planet Why! In its first iteration that was in my head it was to be a place where Manu and his mates could grow old and die with dignity. I imagined a green building, with terracotta bricks and old style floors, with arches and little windows that would let the breeze in. It would be Manu’s home, and workplace as he was able enough to learn gardening. And the strange things is that many believed in this dream. We bought the land, drew the architectural plans and set out looking for funds.
But then on a cold January Day in 2011, my dreams did not fit with those of the Gods of Lesser beings.
They decided Manu had completed his mission and he breathed his last leaving me lost and rudderless. There would be no Planet Why for Manu.
The best I was able do was craft a small residential unit where Manu and a bunch of special and regular kids lived together. Yes there was a dining table, there was a TV, there was a refrigerator and cold water and special treats. Often it was Manu who decided the menu and of course we never ran out of biscuits, Manu’s all time favourite. Manu died quietly after having had his tea and biscuits. The Angel who sustained and protected me for more than a decade flew away leaving me with one unanswered question: did I fulfil the silent promise I had made to myself.
When I feel a little lost ,all I have to do is look at his smiling face that sits on my wall frozen in time and remember that the only way to honour his memory is to continue my journey.
In March 2003, the day after Holi, we learnt that the ‘little boy next door’ had fallen in a boiling pot and, was believed to be dead. We barely knew him, as the family had shifted to Giri Nagar a few days earlier. We felt sorry for the baby, and went on with our lives
A few days later, we heard that the baby was not dead, and was back from hospital. When we saw him, we were shocked. A little bundle swathed in bandages, a bewildered look in his little eyes. The hospital had sent him back, telling the mother that he would not survive. We thought otherwise. With the help of Sophie a young nurse from Belgium and Rani we fought day and night… And six weeks later, Utpal smiled and we knew we had won.
Utpal is a lovely fellow, endearing in his ways, bright and intelligent. We discovered that his mother was bipolar and alcoholic and tried our best to have her ‘dry’ up but to no avail. At the tender age of 4, Utpal went to a boarding school.
We continued to try and rehabilitate the mother but one fine day she vanished. Utpal was shattered and had to go for counselling. We obtained his guardianship from the Child Welfare Committee.
There were some hurdles along the way but we overcame them all as Utpal the brave heart is a survivor. And as he grew up, we saw him transform into a lovely teenager with a heart of gold. He is always willing to help others and never shirks away from any responsibility given to him. He is not your straight A kid but a wonderful all rounder who is a born artist, a mean skater and an incredible dancer.
He cleared his class X and chose to take on humanities as science was not his subject! He is in Class XI and is a Delegate Appointee of his school. During his breaks he volunteers at the Khader centre, his first home. He teaches the children dance and art and has walked into the heart of every child he reaches out. Utpal Bhaiya is a very special person.
Currently, Utpal Bhaiya has completed his studies. From 2020 to 2023, he completed his Bachelors in Mass Communication and Journalism. From 2021to 2023,Utpal began his journey into the film industry through small part-time projects, which gradually opened doors to collaborations with notable brands like Chai Sutta Bar and Infamous Club, he also experienced the Music Industry with projects like Kaarwan with Being UK Youtube, he also handled all shooting and editing using just his phone. These collaborations marked his first income in the field and inspired him to create is own content.
Then, from 2023, he worked for RITAM DIGITAL as a Sub Editor. In 2024, he worked in JANANI, EK AI KI KAHANI as an Assistant Director.
We hope and pray that he will shine and live the life God has destined him to. We tend to spoil him a little, but as was said by a specialist in children’s trauma: “Never forget that there was a time when Utpal spent one third of his life in pain”
Think about it and then like us, you will agree that Utpal needs all the love he can get.
Like all else at Project Why the boarding school project began as an answer to a deafening why. In the summer of 2006 Utpal found he was without a home as his mother had to be admitted in a rehab urgently and the ‘father’ stole all he could from their minute home and vanished. Utpal needed a safe house and the answer was a good boarding school. He joined school at the tender age of 4.
Four years later a potential donor wanted to give some children a better chance in life and requested us to select 4 children who could also be sent to the same school. Vicky, Babli, Nikhil and Aditya were the chosen ones and after spending a year in a residential facility we ran in order to groom them for the school, they joined Utpal.
It needs be said that the dream of having children from the poorest of homes rub shoulders with children from more privileged ones was a dream dear to us and this was a God sent opportunity. Many detractors felt that such deprived children should not be sent to better schools, as if these were hallowed ground, but we were confident that these children would prove that if given a chance, they would shine and do us proud.
Later they were joined by Meher, Manisha and Yash.
Nikhil left the programme after class VI.
They are incredible kids and are doing extremely well both in academics and extra curricular activities
The first batch will graduate in 2019 and we wait with bated breath for that day to dawn.
SPONSORING HEART SURGERIES FOR THOSE MOST IN NEED>
True Project Why is first and foremost an education support programme but when seeing with your heart is its watchword then it takes no time to widen your horizons. Answering every Why that comes our way has been our endeavour and what can be a more deafening why than the cry of a helpless parent in search of support to repair her child’s broken heart. And when you help repair one, it did not take long for others to follow!
Sanjay’s story starts with a camp of the Lohars
of Maharana Pratap, which has a longstanding relationship with Project WHY. The Lohars (ironsmiths) are a nomadic Indian tribe from Rajasthan (Chittorgarh), known to repair arms and shoe horses. One of their camps, containing 30 families, was located close to Project WHY Govindpuri centre. The sight of the Lohar children running and playing amongst the traffic light caught the attention of Project WHY. In 2005, The Project WHY Lohar Centre began, offered a crèche and primary school support for the children. Though the Lohar Centre no longer exists, Project WHY continues to employ people from this community.
Sanjay Padiyar, was one of seven children in the Padiyar family residing in the Lohars camp. Like his forefathers, Sanjay seemed destined to become a blacksmith. However, it soon became apparent that Sanjay’s dreams were much bigger. Having joined Project WHY classes, he finished his schooling. Through the recommendation of his sister, Project WHY employed Sanjay as a resource person. Sanjay was a primary teacher, and took the responsibility to teach at Project WHY for five years. His gentle ways and boundless patience made him a great favorite with the children. Despite his progress, he still took showers on the roadside, convinced that people like him could not transform their lives.
A French filmmaker, Camille Ponsin, visiting Project WHY in 2009, and maked a documentary on Sanjay’s life – Bollywood boulevard: From the Slums to
the Spotlights (AndanaFilms). Sanjay revealed his true dream on camera. “I want to be on the stage of the world. A model,
a Bollywood star”. It was not to be films, but that documentary led Sanjay Padiyar to the fashion ramp. In 2010, Sanjay walked the ramp for a top designer, Narinder Kumar, at the Lakme Fashion Week. In June 2011, Sanjay walked for Agnès B at her Paris Show, and has become a “poster child of rags to riches”.
Sanjay is living his dream and the showers on the street side seem like a distant memory. He continues to model, and has also now opened his own gym. He has become a beacon of hope to his community who hope to follow in his footsteps and achieve their dreams.
Anita’s relationship with Project WHY started in 2002 when she was a young girl studying in Class 3. Her father comes from Bihar and moved to Delhi in the late 80s to look for education. Due however to financial problems, he was forced to start working in the nearby factory at an early age and settled in the Giri Nagar area.
In 2004, with Anita in Class 6, her father, the family’s sole earner, was told that there was no work in the factory and told to take a two month ‘break.’ Whilst her mother had previously devoted her life to running the house, she was forced to begin running a stitching and embroidery service from home. In an effort not to make her family suffer, Anita’s mother combined this income with her life savings to support their lifestyle.
Anita is a glowing example of the opportunities that Project WHY can create. She attended
the centre in Giri Nagar untill Class 12,
and recorded consistent scores of 75-80% throughout her school career. As one of our brightest students, she secured admission to the prestigious Delhi University to do her B-Com in 2012.
Anita returned to us after graduating, wishing to provide the same opportunities to similarly underprivileged children. Her parents were supportive, indeed they knew she was safe with us and did not want her working anywhere else. As one of our oldest and most successful students, we were happy to take her on as a primary teacher. She then went on to teach some of our brightest secondary students in 2012.
In 2015, she came to us with the news that she would have to leave the job, as her parents had found a boy in the village and wished for her to get married. We had no choice but to accept this. Yet, four months later, Anita returned and asked to resume her old post, which we were happy to give her. The boy’s family had demanded a large amount of money as ‘dowry,’ claiming her to be dark in skin and apparently not sufficiently pretty. Yet Anita, as a product of Project Why, had learned to speak for her rights. She knows her self-worth, beauty and value to society and refused to get married under these conditions. She therefore spoke to the family herself to reject the boy and the forced marriage.
Dowry or Dahej is the payment in cash or/and kind by the bride’s family to the bridegroom’ s family along with the giving away of the bride (called Kanyadaan) in Indian marriage. It runs across all class and caste. Although Dowry was legally prohibited in 1961, it continues to be highly institutionalized and prevalent. The groom often demands a dowry consisting of a large sum of money, vehicle, house, furniture, and electronics. The dowry system puts great financial burden on the bride’s family
At Project WHY, we pride ourselves in discussing prevalent social issues such as caste, dowry, violence against women and sexual abuse. We believe that we have made our resource persons fully aware of their rights and responsibilities. Anita, at that moment, stood up for her rights and refused to get married on those terms and conditions. “I am as good as any girl on this planet,” she voiced.
Today, Anita is back teaching and continues
to value education above all else. Together with her mother, she is funding her brother’s B-Tech from IP University, at a cost of INR 60,000 per year, striving to give him the same opportunities in life that she had. Concurrent to her work as a Secondary teacher, Anita is now pursuing her M-Com. She wants to apply for a government job, from which she feels she can have an impact on an even wider scale. Yet always thankful of her roots, she will never stop supporting Project WHY, both through donation and through education.
Under the Right to Education (RTE) Act, passed in 2009, a free and compulsory education is guaranteed for all children aged between six and fourteen. The most recent figures for primary school enrolment in India stand at a seemingly impressive 98 per cent.
But going to school is a very different thing from receiving a quality education. Those monitoring progress on the sustainable development goal of achieving universal primary education have observed that Indian schooling, albeit ubiquitous, is simply not to standards.
At government schools, pupils face numerous challenges. Overcrowded classrooms, absent teachers, lack of toilets and unsanitary conditions are common complaints, and can eventually lead to parents deciding that the education system is simply not worth it. Moreover, given the economic conditions of many parents and the need for someone to help out around the house, there is not enough value placed on a girl’s education. Whilst girls attend primary school in roughly equal numbers to boys, the gap widens as they get older and more are forced to drop out to help with work at home or to get married.
One such story is that of Geeta, who came to Project WHY in 2008. She was studying at the time in Class 5 at the local government school. Her family is from Bihar and very poor. They came to Delhi looking for a better life and live on rent in Khader. Thankfully, her parents were quickly put in touch with us and enrolled Geeta, her sister, and her two brothers into our primary programme.
After a year of her studying at Project WHY, Geeta’s father became very sick and the doctor recommended surgery. He was the sole earner of the family but, with little employment protection law in India, he was deemed unfit to work and lost his job. The family soon found themselves unable to pay the rent or buy groceries. During one of our classes, Geeta shared her family’s situation with her resource person, who came to realise that the family were on the verge of eviction. It was decided that Project WHY would assist by raising money amongst the staff to temporarily pay her rent, in order to avoid her family living on the streets that month.
Geeta’s father, still recovering, was incredibly appreciative, and came to Project WHY personally to thank all of the teachers. We found ourselves touched by their situation and decided that a permanent solution was required. Through our community connections, we were able to find a cleaning job for Geeta’s mother in order that the family could make ends meet. Our staff, who had grown attached to the struggling family, continued to check on them every week. We encouraged them, in spite of their difficulties at home, to allow Geeta and her siblings to continue studying, which they agreed to do.
As Geeta’s father began to recover, a vacancy arose at the Project WHY Khader Centre for a security guard. As a sincere and upstanding member of the community, we offered this job to him and the family’s economic condition slowly started to improve.
Geeta, with uninterrupted education and support, secured 85% in her Class 10 exam in spite of her family’s difficulties. She was admitted for her desired science classes in Class 11, but at this point her parents went through an acrimonious divorce. With neither parent willing to pay the tuition fees, Project WHY again stepped in to fund these studies. We provided counselling to the parents and tried to maintain a healthy environment for Geeta.
Now in Class 12 and preparing to go to university, Geeta is appreciative of everything that Project WHY has done for her, saying, “if it were not for Project WHY, nobody would have helped us and our condition would have become worse”. She looks after her parents, who continue to work, and manages the household budget for herself and her siblings. She says that she will always be grateful to our staff and that “my studies have not suffered and through Project WHY’s guidance I hope to fulfil my dreams and become a doctor.”
Born to a poor family in Bihar, Gyanti Devi never had the opportunity to learn as a child. Soon after her marriage, her husband, who is severely handicapped, required treatment. This meant moving her life and her two children to Delhi in 2006, where they lived on rent in the village of Madanpur Khader. The area houses mostly migrant families and has a high dropout rate from government schools as well as issues of safety and nutrition.
Gyanti Devi’s case was brought to our attention by a friend of the Project, Sunita, at the beginning of 2014. With her husband unable to work due to his handicaps, Gyanti Devi needed income for her family but, with no skill whatsoever, was unable to find a job.
At Project WHY, we felt that our sewing or beautician classes could give Gyanti Devi the opportunity to start a career. However, we soon realised that, being entirely illiterate, she would need more than just vocational skills. Dharmender, the manager of our Khader centre, proposed that she spend the mornings learning to stitch with the vocational group, but also attend literacy lessons with the children for 40 minutes in the afternoon. She agreed to this and became one of our most motivated and diligent students, slowly building up her literacy skills with the children whilst also finding solace in her knitting.
Now, Gyanti Devi is a proud graduate of the Project WHY system and able to read, write and sew with ease. She has started a small business within her village stitching other people’s clothes, with which she is able to provide income to her family. She is also able to read the local newspaper and understand what is going on in the world. She points to an increased sense of freedom and opportunity with the skills that she now has. Previously afraid to take the bus alone, she notes that “I can now make my household budget and also can read the bus signboard.”
Armed with a new sense of financial responsibility, Gyanti Devi has spent the last three years building a new house for the family. She would get up early in the morning and take the interstate bus from Delhi to Palwal (Haryana) by herself, returning late at night. There, she would bargain and purchase the construction materials required. She kept detailed records of all labour payments in a notebook and is proud of her achievements. “I have successfully built my home for my family. So, I can say today that what every man can do, I can also do”.
Project WHY believes that every person should be able to change his or her life, and it provided the support for Gyanti Devi to do this and achieve her dream. She has created a better future for her children and she hopes that the skills she has learnt will allow her family to prosper for generations.
When Babli first came to Project WHY in 2004, she was a bright-eyed, feisty girl; what some Indians would call Bindaas, meaning carefree and confident. She loved books and seemed to always have a smile. It took Project WHY’s resource persons some time to realize that every breath she drew was an effort. Babli had a hole in her heart from birth and needed corrective surgery. Her family was unable to come up with the required funds. They had simply accepted that she would not live long.
In India, little girls are sometimes considered dispensable, their hearts not worth mending. The Census of India 2011 demonstrates a decrease in the population ratio of female children (age group 0-6 years) of India compared to 2001. For every 1000 male children, there were now 914 female children, a drop from 945 – so where are our girls? Investigations show that female infants experienced a significantly higher mortality rate than male infants in all major states.
Thanks to our wonderful friends, Project WHY was able to raise the funds for Babli by 2005 and the operation was performed successfully. It was scary and painful for this innocent little girl, but Babli’s bindaas spirit saw her through it all.
After her recovery, Babli was expected back in school but, to everyone’s shock, it emerged that she would not be able to continue her education. Her mother, being the sole earning member of the family, didn’t have time to take Babli to school. She also needed her to take care of her younger sister. The father was busy playing cards, and it eventually fell to Babli to manage the father’s work cart that sold tobacco and biscuits.
One step forward and two steps back. The Project WHY resource persons soon found Babli sitting on the cart selling chewing tobacco, cigarettes and biscuits instead of being in school, and her little sister standing in the background. She told them about how her name had been struck off from the rolls of the school and why she was working. But Babli’s words, spoken when she had trouble breathing, still resonated: “I want to be a police,” she had said, without hesitation, when asked about her dreams.
Project WHY found the situation unacceptable, and took steps to change it. After a meeting with her parents and a visit to the nearby government school, Babli was back in school.
Today, thanks to a kind sponsor, Babli studies in Class 9 at English Medium Boarding School in New Delhi, where she often tops her class. True, she won’t become a ‘police’ as the aftermath of her surgery resulted in scoliosis, but she will shine. Her education, which had fallen into peril this year because of a major donor backing out, will continue thanks to another kindhearted donor who has stepped in to fill the gap. This is Project WHY’s attempt to prove that given equal opportunities, children from the slum can do as well as those from the privileged classes.
Whilst literacy is essential to breaking social barriers, the problems faced by Muslim women in India extend beyond this. A quality, broad education is required to combat the issues of poverty and political marginalization faced by these girls, and it is essential that parents encourage this. It has been observed that after the first few years of the primary education afforded to the Muslim girl, one of two things usually happens. Either the girl is plucked out of formal education by the time she reaches puberty and for all practical purposes lapses into virtual illiteracy, or she continues in school but does climb up the education ladder due to virtual exclusion.
Shehnaz’s story shows how a young girl came looking for that quality support in her pursuit of an education and she found it at Project WHY.
Shehnaz lived in Bihar with her two sisters, her brother and their parents. Unfortunately, when Shehnaz was just two years old, her mother passed away. Her father soon remarried and got a job in a factory in Okhla, not far from where the family lived. Shehnaz was therefore stuck at home with her stepmother, who was abusive, unpleasant and wholly unsupportive.
Shehnaz was keen to attend a government school but, by 2015, she was well behind on the syllabus. Her father did not believe in education for women and refused to pay for any kind of tuition. Rinka, a friend of Shehnaz, told her about Project WHY, which she had been attending since 2013, and Shehnaz was immediately keen on the idea. She approached us on her own, as her father was too busy to help her, and explained that she had missed out on a school career and wanted to catch up. We were happy to take her on, encourage her, and prepare her to return to school.
Through her own determination, Shehnaz has now taken admission to the local government school and continues to attend Project WHY. Her stepmother was not happy with these decisions, but simply sees it as an inconvenience. With no help or support, Shehnaz walks two kilometers to and from school every morning. She spends the evenings doing chores, which she says keeps her father happy. This way, she is able to avoid being taken out of school and forced into marriage.
“I feel comfortable and happy at the Project WHY, this is the only place where I can be myself and express my feelings,” says Shehnaz. Her dream is to complete her studies and become a teacher like the Project WHY resource persons who have helped change her life. She wants to go on to help change the lives of similar children in her community. Every day is a struggle for Shehnaz, but she is slowly catching up with the other children. With her appetite for knowledge, we are convinced that she will be successful.
Indian society continues to treat disability with indifference, pity or revulsion. Low literacy, school enrolment and employment rates are making mentally disabled people among the most excluded in Indian society. These people are deterred from taking an active part in most families or even communities. Moreover, there is a stigma attached to children with disabilities, especially in rural India, and often even loving parents can do nothing to help their disabled child because they themselves are not aware of the disease or how to take care of the child.
The story of Muna therefore begins in 2005, when he first arrived at Project WHY. It was clear that he had never been adequately looked after. Upon further investigation, it was revealed that, whilst his parents cared about him dearly, they simply did not understand his intellectual impairments. Muna’s parents did not have the time nor the resources to give him due attention, as they had to care for his other four siblings.
Interacting with Muna, Project WHY found that he had little concept of personal hygiene. He would regularly soil himself and had never been taught to have a shower/bath. He had no understanding of social interaction and rules of engagement. This was demonstrated in 2014 when Muna left a shop without realising he needed to pay for his juice and was severely beaten by the shopkeeper.
Having grown up in the industrial neighbourhood of Okhla, Muna would spend his days begging outside temples, occasionally stealing when money was unavailable. Residents of the neighbourhood would befriend him simply to bully and take advantage of his simple mind. Without the ability to communicate clearly, he was reduced to performing illegal errands around the community such as collecting and selling alcohol for under-aged children.
Project WHY began by teaching Muna the basic concepts of hygiene and to be self-reliant. He was taught to use a lavatory, to dress himself and to shower regularly. From there, we were able to build his confidence through speech therapy classes and develop his basic social interaction skills. Project WHY also initiated the process of educating Muna’s parents, who now understand his disability and the kind of care that he requires. They acknowledge his kind heart and sense of compassion even if he cannot communicate this in the same way as other children.
Today, at the age of 19 years, Muna is one of the stars of Project WHY’s special needs class. He is the first to welcome and befriend any new volunteers, including foreign students who do not speak the Indian language. He is very fond of activities such as art, ball games and dancing and, in spite of his difficult childhood, he shows an overall passion for life.
Muslim women are among the most educationally disenfranchised, economically vulnerable, and politically marginalized group in India. Their poor socio-economic status reflects a lack of social opportunity that, though not a feature exclusive to Muslim women, is exacerbated by their marginal status within an overall context for most Indian women.
Muslim women in India have a low literacy rate compared to the Hindu women. About 59 per cent of Muslim women have never attended school. A relatively low male education amongst the Muslims in rural India creates a pressure to impose ceilings on girls’ education, so as not to render them “unmarriageable”. In addition, the low age of marriage is a major inhibiting factor, which reduces women’s autonomy and agency in the marital home and creates conditions of patriarchal subservience that get perpetuated through life. This thereby reduces a woman’s self-worth.
This point is well illustrated by the story of Sehroonisha, a teacher in the special needs section of Project WHY, Govindpuri. Sehroonisha, has always been interested in education. From a very young age she would love going to school. Her dream was to pursue higher education and to have a good stable profession. However, her father did not share this vision and was against her pursuing higher studies as he thought it was a waste to spend money educating girls.
Before her marriage, Sehroonisha lived near Connaught place with her parents, two sisters and three brothers. In spite of her father’s attitude, her mother was supportive of her and would work in people’s homes doing dishes in order to contribute to her education. Sehroonisha eventually graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 2009.
Upon graduation in 2009, Sehroonisha’s father got her married at the age of 20 years to a man who had only been educated until Class 3. “I had to accept my father’s decision at the time” rues Sehroonisha. She held out hope that, through marriage, she could improve her life and explain her interests to her husband. However, her husband did not share the same passion for education and she found that his thinking was on similar lines to her father’s – that is, education is a waste for women.
Sehroonisha had a daughter and a son through the marriage, and soon realised she was the sole provider for them. In spite of her difficulties, she wanted to do something different in her life and stand on her own two feet. She came to know about Project WHY as we had put up a requirement for teachers; it seemed like the perfect platform to change her life. Today she emphasises the impact that the Project has had on her life, saying “Project WHY gave me an opportunity to teach and slowly I was able to rebuild my confidence and take my own decisions with their support.”
With the conducive environment of Project WHY, Sehroonisha has been able to articulate and define her dreams. She acknowledges “All my problems are yet not solved but Project WHY has taught me how to address them with my own abilities”. Today, Sehroonisha enjoys her role as a teacher at the special section of Project WHY, Govindpuri. She has been with us since 2015 and has now taken on the responsibility of looking after the children’s daily activities.
Priya is a 5-year-old girl who lives on the Yamuna Floodplain. Her parents, like the majority of those living on the plain, have no skills other than farming. Priya lives with her parents, two brothers and two sisters. Nobody in the family has received any education, as the expectation is that they will join the family farming business. As soon as they are of age, they will learn to harvest vegetables, which their parents will sell in town. The closest school is over three kilometres away; over a dangerous road, and these children do not feature on the government radar so would be unable to join.
Priya loves to explore the local area and now knows the Yamuna well. When she discovered our centre, which at that time served only higher-level students, she began to come every day and watch the children from a distance. The children of the Yamuna, unlike those of the other centres, are served a full lunch that is generously donated by one of Project WHY’s sponsors. This allows us to provide the children with proper nutrition, and also frees their parents to spend the day on the farm. Priya would watch the secondary students get served every day with wide and envious eyes. Rajesh, a teacher at the centre, one day decided to bring her into the centre and offer her a meal, which she was delighted to accept.
Rajesh started talking to Priya and asked her if she would like to study. She explained that she knows only farming techniques, but she doesn’t enjoy such work and would like to be able to read and write. It was this conversation that inspired us to create the Yamuna primary programme, through which we now teach eighty-four students. Without birth certificates, these students rely on Project WHY for all of their education. We therefore run the centre as a full-time school, following closely the Government syllabus and giving the children the basic skills of literacy that they deserve. As for Priya, she now dreams of being a teacher, and in fact loves her studies so much that she tried to come to school on a Sunday!
