Gifting a Purpose in Life to Adolescent Girls in Slums of Bhopal
- Bhakti Kothari
- Published on 12 Dec 2022, 5:00 pm IST
- 6 minutes read
Highlights
- Madhya Pradesh Police have come up with an initiative called ‘Srijan’ to motivate adolescent girls to choose the right career for themselves and become independent working women.
- The initiative has been launched to prevent crimes against those girls in slum areas who have no aspirations in life and, thus, get into illicit relationships, unwanted pregnancies, trafficking, and more.
- The programme has been a huge success as these girls have now become agents of change in society and are helping in preventing domestic and sexual abuse in their communities.
- Srijan - an initiative for a better tomorrow of girls from slum communities
Owing to the lack of awareness and self-confidence, numerous girls fall prey to adolescent crimes, every year. They land themselves in unwanted situations, thus getting stuck in their life when they should be taking up their studies seriously in pursuit of a good career.
Observing the increasing number of girls that are running away from home or are lured into trouble and illicit love relationships leading to unwanted pregnancies and more trouble, the Madhya Pradesh Police decided to take a step towards their welfare and bright future by launching the initiative, ‘Srijan’.
In an exclusive conversation with Indian Masterminds, the Commissioner of Police, Bhopal, Makrand Deoskar, IPS, and Deputy Commissioner of Police, Bhopal, Vineet Kapoor, IPS, shared details about the initiative. Related Stories
SENSITIZING YOUNG GIRLS
Adolescent girls from the weaker sections of society are highly vulnerable to rejecting their families, running away from their homes, getting abducted, lured by traffickers, and falling into false and illicit love relationships leading to unwanted pregnancies and an end to their prospective careers.
CP Bhopal, Makrand Deoskar, IPS, told Indian Masterminds, “We identified the hotspots for incidences of illicit love relationships between minors, unwanted pregnancies, and elopement through POCSO. It helped us in registering young girls for the initiative where we could indirectly make them understand the consequences of such evils. We motivated them by telling them that they have a better future in front of themselves and they should focus on becoming good working women in life. Srijan has indeed been a great success and we are looking forward to helping more such young girls.”
He recently also honoured the girls who won various competitions by giving mementoes to them at the concluding programme of the Kishori Girls Empowerment Camp organized by Uday Samajik Vikas Sanstha and Bhopal Police.
GIVING ASPIRATIONS TO GIRLS IN SLUMS
A major reason behind girls becoming highly vulnerable to falling into unwanted situations at such a young age is that they have absolutely no aspirations in life and are not interested in building a career for themselves. Their education is also compromised which could be due to the low income of parents, low self-confidence, broken families, single parenthood, alcoholism, domestic abuse and violence, etc. The environment in which they live is not ideal for thriving and their lack of aspiration may come from dropping out of school at a young age and the problem of child marriage.
Keeping their background in mind, ‘Srijan’ camps were launched for the welfare of these young girls to motivate them to take the path of a good career and life.
“The government has a scheme of protecting particularly adolescent girls from taking the wrong path and their overall safety. We realized that girls’ safety is highly compromised in slum communities. So, as a crime prevention strategy, we found that community outreach for girls coming from weaker sections of society needs to be dealt with with a focused approach, especially between the age groups of 12-20 years, which is the most vulnerable group,” DCP Bhopal, Vineet Kapoor, IPS, told Indian Masterminds.
SRIJAN WELFARE CAMPS
Through Srijan welfare camps, the MP police wishes to create a positive environment for these young girls so that they could feel empowered within themselves and take decisions that could ensure a better outcome for their lives while guaranteeing their security, safety, and goals for the future.
“We collaborated with some NGOs working in the slum communities through our Urja Help Desk, to identify girls between 12-20 years of age who wished to register in our Srijan training camps, which are basically personality development camps for slum community girls,” said Mr. Kapoor.
They organized a 15-day empowerment camp for girls coming from the underprivileged sections of society where they received training in areas such as self-enrichment, capacity development, security, and self-protection. This camp also provided them with career counselling. It was also explained to them how they can advance their careers in other police forces, including the RPF.
“We gave them comprehensive training in self-defence, martial arts, physical fitness, and different exercises related to recruitment into uniformed forces, such as essential 800-meter run, high jump, and long jump, among others. In this, along with physical training, judo-karate and yoga, they were trained in the Constitution, women and child rights, laws, protection of children against sexual violence, protection of women against all kinds of abuses, traffic rules, etc.,” the officer said.
CAREER GUIDANCE FOR THEM
Furthermore, the state police are also imparting career counselling to young girls. They are organizing interactive sessions with the girls where they invite people from all walks of life to educate them regarding different career options that they could pursue at their particular educational levels.
“These girls don’t get any guidance from anywhere related to different career options and remain in the dark. Therefore, Srijan can be considered as a comprehensive training package of 15 days in which we have physical fitness, rights education, legal education, and career counselling,” Mr. Kapoor said.
HANDHOLDING SESSION
Once the 15 days programme comes to an end, a handholding session is conducted for the girls, every two months, for two days. Apart from developing their personality, boosting their self-confidence, and empowering them, ‘Srijan’ also aims to bring up these girls as strong pillars of the community who can stand against domestic violence and other forms of evil existing in their society.
“We have noticed that the project has had a major impact on the girls, and today, we have three Srijan camps in three different slums of Bhopal. We are also targeting three more, and pretty soon, we’ll have six camps in total. We are taking feedback and came to know that these girls have prevented many domestic violence situations in their slums till now, on their own. They have become better police informers in cases of abuse and help us in our work. We have also found very impressive improvement in their personalities, in general,” shared Mr. Kapoor.
The trainers are women from the police force itself, who give their own examples of how they rose from slums or very poor backgrounds and turned their life around for the better. Such real-life examples motivate the girls immensely and give them a purpose in life – that is, to shape a better future for themselves by focusing on building a career.
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