Tapping the latent talents

A campaign is underway, reaching out to adolescent boys and girls from marginalised sections, equipping them with critical knowledge on health, rights, safety, and future planning through the activity-based camps. VOICE 4 Girls which identified their needs during the pandemic crisis is helping them with life skills and spoken English skills. In the process, it is also helping them break the harmful cycles of socio-economic and gender inequalities.

"The strength of VOICE 4 Girls lies in delivering highly impactful sessions that rely on the power of empathy. We have scaled to more than 88,000 adolescent girls and boys through our programmes. Despite facing all kinds of problems as a grassroots organisation, our biggest achievement this year was that we could reach out to our existing as well as new campers and provide them with helpful knowledge. In moments like these, when our work is appreciated, we realise the immense impact that we have on communities," says Anusha Bharadwaj, Executive Director, Voice4Girls.

Her VOICE is the flagship programme, where they work with adolescent girls and prepare them to become Sakhis –Peer leaders, Mentors, and Teachers in the community. While working with the girls, they realised that in order to achieve our mission, we need to work with other stakeholders as well. It was then they started working with adolescent boys through the Boys4Change programme. "This year, unfortunately, we have not been able to do our physical camps due to the pandemic.

We adapted our content to suit online platforms and have been doing online sessions since June," says Vishvani Silguluri, Assistant Manager, Voice4Girls.

"Since June, Voice4Girls reached out to boys and girls through their flagship Her VOICE programms like Parichay, Disha, Sakhi Peer Leadership and Boys 4 Change programs like Fireflies and Supernova, said Nayonika Roy, Programme Officer, Voice4Girls.

To see the impact, The Hans India spoke to a Sakhi, Rakshitha, a girl student from one of the tribal welfare residential schools of Telangana. She said, "I am proud to have attended all three VOICE camps. Using the Sakhi handbooks that we received from camp, a friend and I take classes for small children in our hostel and motivate them as well. Due to all this, my school is now a topper in my district."