Tales from the Island of Serendip 4 4

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Roshni Annual Report 2017/18

The sun rises every day. What is to love? Lock the sun in a box. Force the sun to overcome adversity in order to rise. Then we will cheer!

Garth Stein

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PART ONE: ABOUT ROSHNI

Introduction

Roshni is a non profit making organization working in the slums of Rajabazar, West Bengal, India. Roshni's primary goal is to strengthen the gender justice and girls/women empowerment . We aim to achieve this by:

- motivating them to come out of their situations and assuring them that they are not alone

- by giving them strength through youth development programmes

- by connecting them with the outside world

- by creating the opportunity for them to do what they really want

Our journey started in 2014 when we registered as a non profit organization in Kolkata. The basis of our organisation emerged from the persistent gender inequalities in Rajabazar community and the sheer need of the women who became the burden of their family.

We started our work with funds raised largely from family and friends as most young organisations do. This was an important part of our journey, which brought in the spirit of volunteering and commitment to the core team. 

Roshni focuses on developing the potential of women and girls to drive long lasting equitable changes. We strategically emphasise on promoting self, inclusive education, gender equitable and sustainable livelihood opportunities along with legal assistance of the needy women.

Our efforts are focused to fight against underlying causes of women torture, building secure and resilient communities and ensuring a life of dignity for all women and girls from the most marginalised and vulnerable Rajabazar community, especially among the slums.

As we move ahead our key programming approaches will include social analysis and action, gender transformative livelihood development, leadership and life skills strengthening, building capacities and leadership roles at multiple levels, advocacy and dialogues between public, private and civil society.

 

 

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Our Values

Human rights and justice – All of our work is based on respect for the inherent worth and dignity of all people, and the rights that follow from this understanding.

Transparency and accountability – Roshni provides and expects to access clear, accurate and up-to-date information. We are willing to hold ourselves to high standards and seek to hold others to similar standards as the ones we set for ourselves.

Sustainability – Roshni is committed to youth development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their multidimensional needs. By empowering members, developing networks and the communities we serve, we believe that the benefits of our work will be enduring.

Cooperation and partnership – We respect the wishes and requirements of our members and networks – and the communities we serve – and we endeavour to create a shared voice, working together in a manner that enables us to achieve our shared goals and live our shared values.

Peace – Roshni recognises that peace is about more than the absence of conflict. Roshni strives for concord, harmony and tranquillity – a balance of power.

Equity – Roshni shares it own resources fairly and wants to see that the natural and intellectual wealth of the whole world is also distributed fairly, so that everyone is able to gain their share. We know that the success of development can be measured by how the least powerful people and the smallest minority groups are faring.

Edited March 14, 2018 by Flex Mentallo

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The Roshni Team

Shahina Javed - Founder Secretary

Tehsina Banu - President

Shama Parveen- Treasurer

Alisa Hussain

Alfisa Hussain

Farheen Naaz

Mahzabeen Naaz

Neha Khatoon

 

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PART TWO: OUR PROGRAMMES

'Their well-staged events have given me a lot of insight into Roshni's capabilities during my visit in November 2016. They are powerfully motivated, have solid values, a true purpose, and all the necessary skills. They are hard working and committed. Most importantly, they have that something extra that makes a person, a group or an organization special. They inspire by example.'

Michael Anderson, Arc CEO

 

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1. Luke Holland Scholarship Programme

Through this fund we provided tuition support throughout the year to 18 students, apart from this everyone got their annual school fees paid by us, got reference books. Importantly, we organized workshops on child rights regularly with them and also provided some support for their sports activities.

This scholarship is in memory of Luke Holland, a great soul who always stood by the side of the marginalised people from all over the world. In a true sense, he was a world citizen who wanted a world free of exploitation, injustice and inequality. The aim of this scholarship is to provide a chance to the teenage girls studying in the schools to fight against the greatest of all exploitation i.e., child marriage, by continuing their education.

List of all scholars
Name	Age
Ashrina Zurain	14
Siddiqua Warsi	13
Farheen Khatoon	14
Kaniz Fatima 1	14
Kaniz Fatima 2	13
Shoiba Khatoon	12
Ramsha Khatoon	13
Sana Tahsin	15
Alfisa Hussain	17
Firdousi Khatoon	14
Rozy Begum	15
Farah Khatoon	15
Nikhat Parveen	12
Md Farheed	12
Zenat Parveen	14
Arshi Khatoon	15
Kainat Parveen	13
Sumaira Nasim	11

 

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Benefits of scholarship : Girls in our community are valued less than boys and particularly vulnerable. They are victims of gender discrimination and domestic violence. Their rights to survival, protection, development and participation, are violated. At home they remained neglected with fewer opportunities for development. They are heavily burdened with household chores, chances of early marriage and became victims of domestic violence. As a result, these girls experience low self-esteem. They are viewed as a burden to their family, especially because a girl's family must provide a dowry when she marries. So all families pray to have boys rather than girls. Many girls are married off while still below legal marriageable age, because no dowry is needed from a girl's family in this circumstance. Domestic Violence further affects the quality of life. They in turn grow up with low self-worth, unable to cope with educational demands and tendencies to be either withdrawn or become aggressive.

We have personal experience of this vulnerable cycle in the community. Having a strong community base we can work towards empowering adolescents - especially girls - in their communities to realize their rights to development, participation and protection from exploitation and abuse.

And here particularly we found the scholarship programme very useful. Scholarship funds were used partly to pay school fees, which reduced the financial burden on families. In turn, this worked as a deterrent to their family for child marriage and reduced their household chores. Moreover, with this scholarship they continued their education. In one sentence the scholarships have become a ray of hope in the lives of those children who received them.

Our goal is to empower and secure the rights of the adolescents especially girls, help them break the cycle of domestic violence and gender discrimination prevailing in the community . By building their self worth they will be able to stand up for themselves and speak out against violence. We believe that discussions on new ideas will enable young people and adolescents to look at things in a different perspective and bring lasting changes in society.

We will achieve this through the following long term goals:

• extending our defined geography

• identifying the most vulnerable adolescent girls in the community,

• establishing adolescent support groups in clusters in the community and building their capacities on various issues,

• organizing awareness raising events in the community

• creating Youth Led Micro Social Entrepreneurial Units offering services to the adolescents for sustainability.

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Case Study 1: Kaniz Fatima's Story

Fatima is a 14 year old Muslim girl from Rajabazar slum area. Her father is a Moulavi in a mosque. He does not work and depends on others for his family needs. Fatima’s mother is house wife and she is suffering from some health issue thus remains sick for most of the time. Fatima takes care of her family. She has five sisters and Fatima looks after all of them. But Fatima has a dream of her own. She wants to play football but because her father is a Moulavi her family is very rigid and conservative. She is grown up and so her family does not allow her to play football. Her mother is trying to arrange her marriage. She has five more sisters so for her family her early marriage is the only way to get rid of the financial burden. It is directly proportional to the age of the bride. So marriage at an early age will be easier for her parents to pay off. She is a good student and also a good dancer. No football and dance is allowed in her family and she is living a terrible life imposed by her family. Her family does not want to continue her study to save expenses. Kanis Fatima wants to continue her study and wants to support her family. Her struggle is against her own family as well as against the society she lives in. She wants to become a voice in her society as well bread earner of her family. Roshni is doing positive counseling in her family so that they may allow her to play football. Roshni is providing her mental strength and giving her chances so that she is performing dance in some Roshni programmes.

Fatima wants to complete her education and wants a job. Her goal is to stand on her own feet against all the odds in her life. She wants a life of her own choice. She knows that only education can enable her to achieve her goal.

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2. Gender Equality and Awareness Generation Programmes

During this year we gave legal support to 12 women who suffered severe domestic violence. Moreover, in this financial year we reached an estimated 500 women with our Awareness Generation Programme where we specifically targeted women & human rights.

Many women in our community face domestic violence and are not aware of their own rights. They have no basic knowledge of how to take legal steps and as victims feel completely disempowered.

When we become aware of such a case, we arrange legal support for them, and we seek to influence local police to take direct action.

We have established an awareness programme for women in the local community. We seek to empower them by talking about their rights in the community. We create a safe space in which they can share their feelings, in many cases for the first time in their lives. Roshni gave them that space, a sense of solidarity and coming together, of shared strength. In the meetings Roshni organizes, they feel free to discuss the many abuses they face in their daily lives. We teach them how to protect themselves, how to take action in a legal way; and when they are in crisis we give counseling support to them. We also seek to provide them with suitable employment opportunities like professional car driving, bag making etc.

This year we also mobilized nine women drivers in our community, five of whom are now fully trained drivers and four are currently in training. For this programme supported by the Thoughtshop Foundation, Roshni selects women from the community who have at least passed eighth standard (a prerequisite to get a driving license in India). The ThoughtShop Foundation provides the training to drive a taxi, in the ultimate hope that the women will become taxi drivers in the future, a role currently denied to women in Indian society.

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Case Study 2 : Nahid Parveen's Story

"I cried to my mom. I tried to convince her day and night that a woman can drive car without exposing her to the outside world wearing her Hijab. I also told her that no one from our community will ever know my identity and what I'm doing. Apart from that I'll always do what I did so far to assist our family. Importantly, whenever, I'll start making some money from this job we can have a better living and get rid of our poverty."

Nahid did exceptionally well in her schooling and passed eight standard. But she was deprived of higher education as her family thought she had read enough and more education would disqualify her candidature for early marriage in their community.

Her family suffers from extreme poverty. She has a younger brother who earns a meagre income as an apprentice in a nearby shoe factory. Roshni offered her the training opportunity to become a commercial cab driver.

Her journey from a normal woman to a cab driving trainee was always complicated from the very beginning. According to her, in the beginning her brother forced her to stay at home and work as a household aid but her mother agreed to her that she at least should take the training.

 

Later, her mother changed her mind. When Nahid argued  she got beaten by both her mother and her younger brother.

 

"I didn't accept their arrangements - even I rejected a man whom they chose for my marriage and continued my training by fighting all the odds. When they find they can't stop me this way, they increased the intensity of beating me and one day when I thought I couldn't bear anymore I broke and told Shahina appi from Roshni about my immense pain and agony ."

Shahina took immediate step and talked to her family and said "if I see you have beaten your girl like this in the future we'll surely take necessary steps against you."

 

Nahid is now continuing her training and hopes to fulfill her dream to become a driver to end her bigger fight against poverty.

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3. International Partnership with Arc

Arc raised funding for a joint international project with Roshni, to pay for artists and materials and run parallel projects 4000 miles apart. The project was called Cherish, with the focus to connect participants in the two countries through the things in life that they cherish. In the UK, the project also included a Bengali Women's Group from Manchester.

For Roshni, it was the first time they had ever engaged in an arts project. They worked with an artists collective, Feel Me Frame, and the project ran from 3rd to 5th November 2017.

It was a most fruitful programme for us. 15 participants enthusiastically expressed themselves through art works. The Roshni volunteers participated alongside them. On the first day of the programme we shared our feelings which was based on art as a therapy. On the second day we were provided with papers and colors to draw our feelings. Facilitators from Feel Me Frame encouraged participants to draw anything that had relevance with their own life story. The concept was mesmerizing. It was a mixed bag of womanhood and beyond.

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4. Sports Programme

In 2017, we organized a sports mela for the first time in our community. All the organizers in that programme were women. Moreover, in that mela all women participated in A football tournament from different districts of West Bengal. Many girls and boys from the community also participated in this mela, and because so many young people of both genders came together and interacted so positively, to us it was a very big achievement.

 

 

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5. Film Making

Four group members were given the opportunity to participate in a residential film making workshop organized by Thoughtshop Foundation. They made two documentary films, one about a footballer girl, another with a woman taxi driver. Roshni core group member Mahjabeen Naaz was invited to attend the Ankur Film Festival in Mumbai and showcase her film, which won the award for best cinematography.

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6. Awareness Programme & Other activities

Currently, we have 150 participants who are divided into 6 clusters and in each cluster we have 25 adolescent girls and boys.

Roshni's Core Team is comprised of 6 volunteers: Shama Parveen, Alisa Hussain , Alfisa Hussain, Mahzabeen Naaz, Farheen Naaz and Neha Khatoon. Every week they meet with our adolescent boys and girls and conduct a workshop on different issues and give mental support. We listen to their concerns and discuss them with the group. If need be, we help them by intervening. For example, Farheen Khatoon shared that her uncle continuously physically abused her and she did not know what to do about it. Roshni arranged to meet her mother and talk about the situation. Her mother informed us that after Farheen’s father’s death her family went to live with her uncle. This became a burden to him, so he would take out his anger on Farheen by beating her. Then we talked with her uncle and aunt and they gradually understood their mistake and started supporting her.

 

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Also we had taken up the following activities this year:

1) Roshni conducted a workshop with adolescent girls on Reproductive Sexual Health Rights.

2) Roshni celebrated Rakhi Utsav. It is an Indian festival where a sister puts a bracelet on her brother’s wrist. It reinforces brother-sister bonding. However, our approach was to use this opportunity to unite our community together for good cause. Through this festival we broke the stereotype, asking boys to put the band on girls' wrists, and take an oath to protect humanity beyond the religion, sex ,cast, and community.

3) On 15th August we celebrated Independence Day; and on that day we organized a community event where our adolescent girls and boys performed dance drama, recitation, songs etc.

 

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PART THREE: PLANNING FOR NEXT YEAR

We have identified the following key goals for 2018/19:

1. To continue the Luke Holland Scholarship programme

2. To commence livelihood training for abused women

3. To establish a computer training center for our adolescent groups

4. To form a Child Protection Committee

5. To provide legal aid / mental support for victims of domestic violence. Every 2 months we’ll organize a training event for women on their human rights

6. To start a women's club in Rajabazaar

Shahina Javed

Founder Secretary

March 2018

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WEB SITE: http://www.roshniumeedki.org/

 

CONTACT US:

roshniumeedki@gmail.com

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Following the successful fundraiser, we've agreed that funding will be spread over four quarters, with the entire year's rent up front. There is sufficient to cover 18 scholarships, legal aid for abused women, picnics for the children, and community events. There is also a bit of reserve, just in case. [I have urged Shahina to look for a more secure base, and if she finds one and - more than likely - the rent increases, we'd still be able to cover the difference.]

Shahina has promised to send me the bios of the remaining 6 scholars once she returns from a trip to New Delhi, where she is serving as a delegate at a political congress.More soon...

Edited March 24, 2018 by Flex Mentallo

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Sorry I've not been more actively updating Roshni's adventures the past couple of months.

 

I can confirm that much of the funding was sent to Roshni to cover rent for the year plus the first quarter's running costs. They have decided to stick with their current base now that the tensions have subsided.

 

Also wanted to let you know that after an 18 month hiatus, I will be returning to Kolkata towards the end of June for a brief visit, and will update properly following my return.