Success Stories

Mina in India
Genet in Ethiopia
Cynthia in Paraguay
Clarence in the United States
Elvia in the Dominican Republic
Felipe in Paraguay
Shanthi in India
Abdul in Senegal

Mina

Nishtha
Baruipur, West Bengal, India

"Before, my life was like that of a caged bird that fidgets in the cage thinking about getting out and flying."

Mina Naskar, 15, speaks for many girls in her village of Umarpota in eastern India whose lives have been changed by Nishtha. Founded more than twenty-five years ago as a village charity club for women, Nishtha has evolved into a grassroots movement that promotes education and basic rights for hundreds of girls and women. In a society where girls have traditionally been confined to household duties without receiving the recognition, appreciation, or opportunities afforded to the boys of the community, Nishtha has made enormous progress in changing the gender biases that have clouded the destinies of women for generations.

With centers in more than sixty villages in rural West Bengal, Nishtha involves entire communities in its educational and training activities aimed at eliminating gender inequality, illiteracy, and child labor. Through an integrated program combining nonformal education, basic health care, and social activism, girls gain the skills and confidence that enable them to claim roles in their communities that are equal to those of their male counterparts. For example, Nishtha classes—which are available to both girls and boys and even to older women who did not have the opportunity to attend school in their youth—include reading, math, geography, and art. Health lessons teach young women to care for their bodies, and children learn proper habits of hygiene that they then take home to their families. Both girls and boys participate equally in community development activities such as the building of roads and irrigation canals. As volunteers and teachers are in short supply here, older girls known as Kishori Bahini manage many of the activities and classes, learning important leadership skills that help diminish the traditional roles of superiority and subservience that divide genders in most communities.

Until Mina started going to the Nishtha center in Umarpota, her household duties and her parents’ belief that educating girls was unnecessary prevented her from attending school with any regularity. “Before, [my parents] wouldn’t even let me study,” Mina reports. “But I started going to Nishtha anyway. I told my parents that if they took care of me the way they took care of my brothers, then I would have an equal chance to be able to support them and myself when I’m grown up.”

As a Kishori Bahini, Mina teaches and mentors groups of Balika Bahinis, younger girls who will later become Kishori Bahinis themselves, continuing the tradition of activism and self-empowerment that Nishtha has helped to establish. Through their work in their communities, Mina and her peers have found the means to express themselves and a way to be successfully heard, recognized, and respected in a society that has in the past all but ignored the opinions and contributions of women. In addition to their studies, Nishtha children repair roads and other public structures; they counsel families about the dangers of early marriages and pregnancies for young girls; they intervene in situations of spousal or child abuse; and they have even “bullied” fathers into exercising proper sanitation habits. Reflecting on her role in saving a friend from an early marriage, 15 year-old Champa said, “It was amazing that our elders were taking advice from us, that they listened to us and eventually changed their minds. We actually stopped a child marriage, and we’re very proud of that.”

Nishtha’s commitment to teaching girls self-sufficiency through education and confidence-building gives young people new, powerful female role models in the village and encourages every young girl to believe that her dreams can take flight.

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