By Elisa Rossignoli and Stefan Teplan
Role plays and dancing - all part of "Grihini"
Do you know how to prepare dhal properly? Do you know how to embroider, how to sew, how to stitch? Do you know how to clean a tiled floor? For all those whose answer to one of these questions has been “no” there have been “Grihini”-programmes for more than 40 years in India. Grihini simply means housewife in Hindi because according to traditional views all these things are the things a young woman should know before she gets married. So Grihini has always been a programme for girls. Especially girls whose education was not sufficient enough to fulfil the tasks of a housewife, like school-dropouts, were sent to Grihini-programme by their parents, to make the young women fit for life, fit for family life.
On the Andamans the tsunami not only caused death and destruction, it also endangered the Grihini-programme: one building in Mayabunder, north of the Andaman’s capital Port Blair, was damaged so severely that some of the girls might have gone totally unprepared for the challenges of a housewife, had there not been the help of the diocesan Caritas “Acani” (which stands for Andaman and Nicobar Catholic Association).
Acani did more than renewing the building. It renewed the whole programme. In the time of globalization, their consultant Sr. Roselyn – Caritas-India-expert for gender and community issues – claimed, young women have to know more than cooking, cleaning and stitching. “We cannot reduce them down to stereotype roles if we want to give them a chance to cope with life in the 21st century.” According to Sr. Roselyn the questions today have to be: Do you know what is happening to your body when you grow up? Do you know how to open a bank account? Do you know how to apply for a job? Do you know about women’s rights? So after a thorough revising of the old concept the girls in Mayabunder and in Port Blair, where another “Grihini”-school is located, have other subjects (in addition to the traditional ones) on their timetable since September 2006: health and hygiene, physiology, gender awareness, job orientation, everyday life performances outside and not only inside of the house.
Sr. Flavia with her pupils
And since this is much more than simply preparation for a life of a housewife the name “Grihini” just doesn’t fit any longer. Acani now calls it: Kishori shashkti karan. Which is also Hindi and means: Empowerment of adolescents.
The young girls in Port Blair and Mayabunder are delighted: “Before I came here, I thought being a woman is a waste”, says one of them as we visit their school. She grew up with the feeling that only men count in this world. “Now”, she says, “I am happy to be a girl.”
Another one says: “I was, frankly spoken, afraid to come here because I was afraid to speak. I thought all the other ones would laugh at me because I hardly speak any Hindi. But to my amazement nobody ever laughed at me and now I end up in speaking fluent Hindi.”
Some of the participants of this empowerment-programme are nearly illiterate. Their knowledge of Hindi is not very well as they have Sadri as their mother-tongue. That’s why Sr. Flavia, who is running the “Kishori”-programme in Port Blair, makes sure the young women first get confidence and have the courage to speak, although their vocabulary and grammar may be far from perfect. Confidence-building through role plays and various activities is one of the major concerns of Sr. Flavia and the Acani-team supporting this programme.
Sr. Flavia and her colleague Olympia are the two teachers employed for the school in Port Blair, but they are not the only ones teaching. Unlike the old concept, with one single teacher, now there are several experts training the adolescents. There are for instance doctors from a hospital giving lectures on health issues. Or there is the chance to participate in vocational SHG-trainings of Acani. Recently the girls had the opportunity to join an agricultural training on food processing.
The girls in the Andamans thus are prepared to more than just marriage: they are prepared for life. As for marriage the question remains: Why should only girls get prepared?
“There is a lot”, one of the young girls claims, “that men also have to learn. They ought to know how to take care of children, they ought to know how to treat us when we are pregnant, and they ought to know more about women’s rights and gender issues.”
The term “Kishori sha shakti karan” is not confined to women. Who knows, maybe in a year Acani will run a programme like this also for the other sex?
Copyright: Elisa Rossignoli and Stefan Teplan
Photography by Elisa Rossignoli
