Chamarajanagar, one of the most backward districts of Karnataka, will soon have adolescent girls as brand ambassadors to tackle problems like child marriage and malnutrition.
An innovative campaign USHA (Understand Sensitise Help Achieve) aims to improve education, health and hygiene with young girls spreading the word with help from their teachers.
Hephsibha Rani Korlapati, Chamarajanagar Zilla Panchayat CEO, said under the project, adolescent girls would share their experiences, be it problems they underwent because of under-18 pregnancy or how they successfully managed to get a toilet constructed in their homes. Proactive school teachers of the district have been roped in as mentors for each of 130 gram panchayats in the district.
The project aims to reach out to girl children and young adolescent women in the district through mentoring. Besides this, the district administration has lined up several activities by convergence of various government schemes and department initiatives in a campaign mode.
The D.M. Nanjundappa Committee Report on Redressal of Regional Imbalance classified Chamarajanagar as the most backward in the State. The two-month project, launched on November 25 (UN International Day for Elimination of Violence Against Women), will end on January 24, celebrated as National Girl Child Day in India. The campaign is part of the SMART (Support, Mentoring And Responsive Teaching) initiative that aims to improve SSLC performance in the district.
Some of the goals of the project include improving girls’ hostels, providing career guidance and counselling to students, preventing child marriage, focusing on nutrition and health, and ensuring access to toilets at homes for all girls.
Ms. Korlapati said they plan to set up a mini sanitary napkin manufacturing unit in girls’ hostels. They want to introduce an activity hour for adolescent girls on sanitary napkin making.
