Empowerment of Girls has become a critical imperative in our quest to have a happy and successful future for our girl child by creating awareness in them regarding the multiplicity of the challenges faced in today’s society in transition.
The concept of empowerment flows from the word ‘POWER’. It is vesting of power where it does not exist, or exist inadequately. In this context, Empowerment of Girls would mean equipping them to be economically independent, self-reliant, possess positive esteem to enable them to face, cope, and stand up to any difficult situation / challenge.
oday there is a plethora of legislations with the objective of providing protection and effectively dealing with the risk factors in the external environment. However, requirement for taking recourse to law comes up in most of the cases post any unwarranted incident only, and can therefore be an instrument for post-incident redress at best. The approach here is essentiallypunitive, and as our experience shows, is preventive only to a limited extent.
On the other hand, being a teen ager today is a risky business. The risks are several, and includes problems ranging from communication gap and distance from family, addiction to TV and internet / mobile etc., undesirable friendships, academics getting affected, to problems as critical as alcohol and drug dependency, harassment and physical abuse, violence etc. The problems facing youth are so immense, many adults throw up their hands in frustration, and the young children are written off as ‘unsalvageable’.
Adolescents and young adults are however, recognized as the last best chance for communities to ensure that the youth have the coping mechanism in place, to identify the potentially vulnerable areas by themselves, and are able to select the most appropriate behaviorneeded to face up to the challenge. Obviously, no parent can afford to give up and let the child go on wrong path. Our thought processes, initiatives and ameliorative systems have to undergo a re-orientation from being a punitive to preventive through enabling the girl and strengthen her faculties to be able to face the environment and its complexities, and cope with the challenges.
