It all started when 24-year-old Sonal was shooting a film for a company. She came across a pregnant woman who already had six daughters and was expecting her seventh child. The woman was living in poverty and struggling to take care of her children. She told Sonal that if she had a daughter again she was ready to strangle the child. She was already planning on sending one of her daughters, then eight years old, to a brothel so she could contribute to the family’s upkeep.
Sonal froze upon hearing these words. It only took her only an hour to realize she wanted to help change the life of girls destined to prostitution and other occupations unfit for children. Within three weeks, she started Protsahan as a one-room arts and design school located in a slum in Delhi.
Her organization aims at empowering at-risk teenage girls with creative education and entrepreneurial skills so they have a chance to break the cycle of poverty and abuse. The NGO does this with the help of a creativity model which includes design, art, digital stories, photography, technology and cinema.
“We use simple techniques, but with a difference. We use scrabble to teach them English, cartoons and photographs to keep the interest alive, game and art based education, digital storytelling to make teaching a fun process. Our sole mission is to encourage creative education and skills development through creative design thinking approaches”, says Sonal.
The girls also attend a bridge course for approximately two years alongside the art courses. In the bridge course, teachers from the local community who have been trained by Protsahan over the years, teach them all the basics so they can be admitted in government schools.
Sonal says that in the NGO sector there is constant talk about scaling up. “Everybody wants to scale up. It looks good on annual reports, it looks good everywhere. But many people don't want to look at empathy. Here, we are trying to work with 400 girls for the last five years, making sure that (...) everything in their life is sorted - from the point when they were picked up from a garbage bin to the point where they are taking lessons in classes.”
It is a long way from being a child prostitute to having a fulfilling job, but it can be done with the proper motivation, tools, and some help from people who care.
Source: thebetterindia.com
