Voices of Adolescents organised its first event with adolescents in the city from different schools and backgrounds at Dylogg Coworking on Sunday.
This was to mark the International day of the girl, and was targeted to sensitise young children on gender, stereotypes and equality
A film called ‘Muskaan’ on female foeticide and girl child was screened at the beginning. A whiteboard depiction game to redefine characteristics on male and female gender was played. Students then engaged in learning about other students and building trust exercises with them. They opened up about gender in their homes and families, jokes among friends and the changing times.
Current statistics were discussed and quizzed, on sex ratio, access to education by Kokila Bhattacharya. Children believed that some Bollywood songs and item numbers are deprecating, discriminatory and do not respect women, and so they rewrote some of them in groups.
Michael Juma, Chief, UNICEF, Madhya Pradesh interacted with the students during International Day of Girl Child re-emphasized on this year's theme, ‘With Her: A Skilled Girl Force’ and reiterated the need to improve and widen scope of opportunities for girl child as well as the need to increase investments to enhance ease of their access to quality and inclusive education, health, nutrition, sanitation and protection aspects to enable realize their potential. He stressed the need to collectively work on social behaviour change interventions to eliminate child marriage in an effort to equitably give girls a platform to realize their dreams.
