Author: Reseñas

3. What according to you is the best solution to ensure that every girl goes to school?

Every girl must get equal opportunity for education. If we see parents or other members of our community trying to stop girls from going to school, we should first try to talk to them and make them understand about the importance of educating girls. We need to explain to them how even the government is working hard to make sure that girls get educated. Government has many good programmes for parents who have money problems in sending girls to school by giving free education and good facilities like free meals, books, etc. We have all heard of ‘Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao’ programme launched by the government. We need to make sure that in every community all parents are made aware of importance of girl child, education, health and hygiene and not to believe things like girls are a burden to the family. We need to support and motivate girls to join sports, defense, business and all other jobs. We should stop making fun of girls by saying mean words like ‘item’ that can hurt their feelings. We must understand that our mother is also a woman and she has taken great pain to give birth to us and take care of us. So we must make sure to give equal opportunities for girls and boys and give them good quality education.

-Anmol Tiwari, Grade 5, Shri Ram Vidya Mandir, Kandivali East

4. If you have a personal story of lack of opportunities for girls, please share it.

In my community, many girls don’t go to school. Even in my class, there are very few girls compared to boys. I have a story to share about the lack of opportunities for girls in my community. This story is about a girl called ‘Bomthi’. She lives in my neighborhood with two brothers and parents. Till 4th standard all three kids went to a nearby government school. Her parents always scream at her and tell her to only do housework and not to go to school. She always had to work extra but her brothers never had to do the same. One day, her parents removed her from school. At that time she did not understand why they did that. So she only sat at home and did housework. Then she realized that her parents didn’t have money to send all the children to school. So her parents decided to only send her brothers to school. There are so many girls like Bomthi who don’t go to school in my chawl. I felt really awful about this situation. So I talked to my parents about it and asked them to talk to Bomthi’s parents. My parents were finally successful in telling Bomthi’s parents to send her to a government school where they wouldn’t have to spend so much money but still give some education to Bomthi. There are so many stories like this in India. So many girls don’t have the basic right to basic education and health facilities. Even though the government is doing many programmes like Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao it is still difficult for poor people especially to give opportunities like quality education and sports to their girls children. It is my dream to one day stop all this and make sure that every girl in India will be able to have good education and a bright future.

-Nandini Santosh Sonkamble, Grade 5, Shri Ram Vidya Mandir, Kandivali East