Empower The Girls In Vellore District On Puberty And Adolescence.

Least any woman expects in this world is to have her dignity protected.  When that doesn't happen, they feel violated and the consequences can be long lasting.  I am Priya and when I was a 13-year-old young girl, I was harassed by a group of young boys to an extent where police had to involve to bring normalcy.    I felt lost and confused about not knowing what to do.

When I began to share my experience with my classmates, I learned that there were many girls being harassed in a similar way or worse but they chose to remain quiet.  I refused to be quiet.  I learned all about puberty and adolescence and then on November 14th, 2014 I got permission from my school headmaster and made a presentation to 400 of my school girls.  

I was featured in the newspaper and then many schools started to invite me.  My friends and I would carry the entire audio-visual system to various schools to make the same presentation to empower young girls on puberty and adolescence.    Before we realized, we reached out to more than 1000 girls.

Just about the same time, there was a news article declaring the Vellore district as the worst affected district in the entire state of Tamilnadu for Child Sexual Abuse.  I was distressed beyond belief.  During my presentations, I observed that girls seem to learn more on this subject when there were no adults around.  When I shared this observation with the Director of the Hope House where I was studying then, he combined all these together (my personal experience, district's dubious distinction, and my observation) to come up with a program called "Project YUVA" (Project for the Youngsters to Understand & Verbalize Adolescence).

Project YUVA is intended to reach out to the entire district in the next five years and I am helping out as an ambassador by spreading the word around to raise resources for Project YUVA.  

It is my hope that every child in our district is empowered adequately enough to protect their own dignity but for that to happen, Project YUVA needs resources to take this program forward.  Would you like to help?  Empowering one child requires Rs. 150/-.  

With this donation, we visit schools and make a presentation on adolescence and abuse and then distribute a book called 'Menstrupedia' to give it to one girl to read and help 10 more girls to read.  If we can reach our goal (of Rs. 5,00,000), we can purchase 3333 books and the net impact could be as much as 33330 generations protected.  Please help now.