Dreaming big set these women free

At the recent DNA Conversations, held a week before the Stayfree DNA I Can Women's Half Marathon, activists and education experts said that enrolling girls in school and stopping them from getting married early is a battle they haven’t won yet.

Shabnam Hashmi, an acitivist who runs the NGO Anhad, says that the literacy rate amongst women has hit a low point of 0-7%. To address this problem, her organisation started literacy and vocational training programmes in Haryana and Mewar.

"The village folk started rumours that we were going to 'spoil' their girls and tried to discourage us,'' she said.

One of the major hurdles in the education of women is early marriage. Sana Ansari, 20, and Shweta Nagaria, 19, who are now associated with the NGO Akanksha, are role models for their communities for postponing their marriage age and becoming independent.

Ansari was six years old when she joined Akanksha. She studied in a civic school but could not follow important concepts or tenses, for instance. But now, she helps run the Akanksha Art shop in Worli and dreams big.

"My father is a cobbler and we are from an extremely low income background. A predictable future for a girl like me would be marriage and children. But Akanksha helped me carve out a different life for myself. I want to work in the corporate world now,'' she said.

Nagaria, too, fought with her family when they wanted her to get married at a young age. She now studies in Jai Hind College, Churchgate. She says her life changed when she joined Akanksha. She was exposed to literary trips to Infosys, met leaders who inspired her to follow greatly. Nagaria is helping others like her by tutoring them in Maths.