Formation of Balika Sanghas and awareness program in various Schools at manvi taluka

Introduction:
There are many stages in human life, Infancy, toddlerhood, childhood, adolescence youth, adulthood and old age. Out of all these adolescence stage is very crucial and also important where one undergoes some physical, emotional and mental changes in one’s life. In this stage if not guided and motivated properly there is every possibility that he or she will either choose wrong path or lose the focus in life. The main objective of the program was to educate and guide the adolescent girls to understand, to accept their physical and emotional changes they are undergoing. Secondly, to take good care of themselves during this period of life, so that they become mature students at the school and avoid fear and superstitious beliefs, prevalent in the villages, and also to know their rights, to save themselves from child labour, child marriage etc. Taking this into consideration, VIMUKTI organization formed Balika Sanghas in the villages for the dropout girls with the support of CDPO department in 15 Grama Panchyath of Manvi Taluka.

The Objectives are:-
• To improve the nutritional and health status of girls in the age group of 11-18 years.
• To provide the required literacy and numeracy skills, through the non- formal stream of education, to stimulate a desire for more social exposure and knowledge and to help them improve their decision making capabilities.
• Through this balika sanghas dropout Girls will get the opportunity to go back to schools.
• These balika Sanghas will bring awareness to their parents regarding child Marriage, child dropouts and child labor etc.
• To train and equip the girls to improve and upgrade home based skills.
• To promote awareness and .health, hygiene, nutrition and family welfare, home management and child care, to take other measures as would facilitate their marrying only after attaining the age of 18 and if possible even later.
• To gain a better understanding of their environment related social issues and the impact on their lives and
• To encourage adolescent girls to initiate various activities to be productive and useful members of the society.

Vimukti organization after appointing two Volunteers went around 15 Grama Panchyath to initiate the Balika sanghas initially in the selected villages, with the cooperation of the CDPO officials. Balika sanghas are girls’ who are between 11-18 age, often set up in rural areas, which try to tackle and promote issues of girl child protection. The main aim of forming the Balika sanghas in the villages is to know their rights as girls and make use of them in needed situations. The balika sanghas play a vital role in creating an enabling environment and becoming the support group for empowerment of girls. These Balika sanghas also play vital role in working against to root out the evil practices of child labour, child marriage, and child dropouts etc. Furthermore, the long-term goals of the balika sanghas should be expanded from creating a social space for the girls to express themselves, to ensuring that they have important contributory roles to play in the democratic processes in the village and that they are recognized as social actors in their own right so that they can enrich community life through their inputs. The volunteers described about the process of balika sanghas and its effectiveness. There was very good discussion between the participants and resource persons. The participants raised many doubts and their daily problems which were aptly answered. All the participants were happy and satisfied with the informative sessions.

Nearly 1550 beneficiaries profited from the programme and expressed that they were ignorant about these things and were happy to be the members of this balika sanghas.