National 8 (Spotlight Weekly)

It’s all about education!!!

By Shruti Pant

“After looking at the position of the moon, sun and the earth, the village priest made his way to Mr. Sunit’s house. Mr. Sunit was the village farmer and had a small family. His daughter was an important asset for his family. She was as bright as the full moon and her beauty was renowned all over the village as a rising sun. It was because of this reason that most of the villagers had an eye on his daughter to marry their son. As usual, on this particular day, the priest asks Mr. Sunit for his daughter’s hand. He starts to persuade Mr. Sunit by proving this match with his logic of astronomy. In addition, he convinces Mr. Sunit by comparing his small estate to the huge estate owned by the boy’s father who was a businessman. Mr.Sunit, being an uneducated man, is convinced easily. He imagines his daughter living a happy life with the wealthy family. Later, both the families discuss over the matter and start making plans for the marriage. The marriage takes place. One year after the marriage, the lovely fourteen-year old girl becomes pregnant. However, unable to give birth to the baby, she dies…”

I heard this story from an old lady who sat beside me in a public bus as I traveled to school. Can you believe the above story to be real? Well, I didn’t at first, but I have learned that this practice happens all the time. However, it was hard for me to believe because I could never imagine a fourteen-year old girl to be pregnant and I knew that women in cities easily gave birth to children in the hospital and no one died in the process. One year after I heard this story, I visited Daman, a small village in the Southwestern part of Nepal. The social practices that existed in this village shocked me. Then, the story made sense to me. In fact, the unimaginable social practices as described in the old lady’s story suddenly appeared before me. I was astonished to see the village lacking the most important infrastructure--education and the existence of social problems like early marriage and early pregnancy that were so prevalent in the whole village. This was when I started to realize the importance of education, which could remedy the problem and add more of the happiness into the village.

A remedy for this problem lies in the hands of Children’s Development Organization. Therefore, this is a proposal to the Children’s Development Organization of Daman to raise awareness among the villagers about sending their daughters to school. First, I will describe the pathetic situation existing in this village. Then, I will outline what the children’s development organization needs to do to remedy this problem. And finally, I will show the benefits of running those awareness programs.

The social practices of Daman are very different than that of cities. At this village, I observed that the man or father of the family called himself “the breadwinner”. He worked in the farm, produced crops, and controlled his huge estate. In truth, he controlled his wife more than he controlled his farm. He made sure she showed him enough respect and made him happy. This particular couple had five children four daughters and a son. The son was the youngest in the family which made me sure that the couples had been longing for a son for a long time. This son, though youngest, was the king of the house. His whims and desires were easily fulfilled. The four elder sisters would linger around him to make him happy. This made me realize the importance of a son in the village to continue the legacy of the family. However, I started to worry about the four daughters who were least cared about by their parents or themselves as they spent most of the time caring for others in the family. I could feel the pain of the daughters and their eyes showed sufferings to me. As I knew of no one else to give me an idea of their life besides their father, I started to get closer to him. I was looking for an opportunity to talk to him when one fine day, he beckoned me to come into a room where all of the family members were talking together around a burning fire. He showed concern and interest towards my project and he seemed eager to help me with my project. This encouraged me to ask him to give me a general idea of the background and life of his daughters. After a little hesitance the man went on: “I have been successful to marry three of my daughters before fifteen.” The first sentence he said was able to shock me by itself. Later, he again added:

“Two of my daughters are extremely under pain. Both of them could not give birth to live babies. My second daughter is having her fourth pregnancy and she will be delivering in May. She has become so weak and unhopeful due to her previous experiences that we have nothing to do besides praying for her. Both of them are treated badly by their in-laws and husband. The first one is abandoned by her family and lives with us. I hope the two of my remaining daughters do not have to go through the same thing. I am happy that the third daughter has been proposed a marriage from a good family and will be marrying in March. I am very relieved and pleased that she got to marry at fifteen too. I am sure the fourth one will also get a nice husband before this age. She is the most pretty among the girls and has already been offered many hands from good families”

Soon his low voice came to a halt. The genuine information that I received from him was enough for me. It gave me a lot of ideas about the actual need for the village girl’s education. However, this was an assumption. As I wanted to learn more about the village girls, I decided to follow the fourth daughter as she went to the stone taps to get her pots filled with water. As I was accounted with the shyness of village girls, I hid myself behind the bush. so that they wouldn’t sense me around. As usual, today’s topic of conversation was education. “I wish I could go to school,” said one of the girls. “My brother goes to school everyday but my father thinks I should help my mom with her works,” said the other. Soon their voices came to a halt. I realized that they were ready to go back to their houses to go on with their daily works. This gave me surety that the girls had a deep curiosity within them to study and education was their necessity. I was more assured about the existence of the problem that needed special attention from the authority.

Children’s development organization could remedy this problem from our villages. Firstly, they should try to get funding and grants from the ministries and other funding agencies to run this program. In addition to that, I can personally give some of my earnings and can raise funds through my friends to start this program. Secondly, the representatives allotted to give the awareness programs must be trained. Children’s development organization should contact other organizations like UNFPA (United Nation’s Fund for Population Activities) and other similar organizations in the capital for this purpose. Awareness programs should be initiated through house-to-house technique. Trained programmers should go to each house and talk to people about the importance of education to girls. The best people to raise awareness would be the villagers themselves as they would know the culture better and could tackle the problems accordingly. In addition to this, posters and pamphlets could also help a lot in this matter. Furthermore, the trainers should work with the teachers of the public schools, so that they can influence the parents to send their daughters to school. Another great way of influencing the villagers would be by giving the villagers the examples of some of the great woman achievers in the nation. I can predict the success of this program and the future happiness of this village with surety. At the end of this program, more villagers will be convinced to send their daughters to school and feel the benefits of educating a girl.

At the end of this program, the villagers will themselves realize that providing education to girls is worth it. As a result of this, more villagers will admit their daughters to school. In return, this will have a lot of good impacts upon a growing girl. She will be wiser. A young school going girl will gain more confidence and can make her individual decisions. Once she becomes capable of making wise decisions, her father will have full confidence on her and agrees with her decisions as well. An example would be Mr. Sunit’s daughter who married at ten. This young girl could have easily resisted this marriage if she had some knowledge of school. She could convince her father of the fact that early marriage is illegal and that she could die if she went through early pregnancy. On the other hand, a school going girl will have more knowledge on health than an average villager. This knowledge will help her detect simple diseases like diarrhea and fever at home and treat the disease properly. Furthermore, she will know ways of preventing pregnancy which will help her save herself from early pregnancy and cases of child hemorrhages. She will start developing a smart outlook towards life and the villagers will copy it. Eventually, the village life will become much happier. This will build girl’s self-confidence, and improves her dignity in the society. In addition, a young girl will not have to linger around her brother fulfilling his wishes because he is a boy. The gender inequality will slowly start to diminish. This will help villagers know the importance of educating a girl. Later, after looking at the benefits villagers might also send their girls to study abroad which will help the village to produce many strong leaders who can later invest in educating girls through the children’s development organization.

I have no doubt that this program will be successful. The end results would be that the village will be much more happy and prosperous. The health conditions of the village will improve and most of the social problems will slowly start to diminish. Now, a question that arises amongst us would be the success of the program. In fact, we could take the example of similar successful programs that were run by children’s development organization in the far western region of Nepal for this matter and the fact that this made the villagers aware that education was the only way to get rid of these existing social problems. Similarly, the success of this program in our region will not be far from our reach either. All that is required is to have a goal and persistence through the organization, to make the villagers aware about the necessity of education to girls. The results would be surprising--gender equality for girls and happiness for everyone.