SuperSmart Shakti Girls Safety Network

Adolescent girls are the most vulnerable group in our society. India has been labeled the most dangerous place on earth to be born a girl because of the neglect and discrimination they face throughout their life. There are a multitude of barriers to their personal and professional happiness and life opportunities such as lack of education, gender discrimination, early marriage, domestic violence and sexual abuse to name a few. Simply put, they do not have equal opportunity to access their own human rights.

One of the biggest challenges that adolescent girls face in India is early marriage. In India, 47% of girls are married before the age of 18, and 22% of women between the ages of 22-24 years old have had a child before the age of 18. Girls who get married early are most likely to drop out of school, face domestic violence, and have high risk pregnancies. Early marriage also leaves girls unprepared for child rearing, and helps perpetuate a cycle of vulnerability for future generations.

Shakti is a long-term (12 - 15 month) mentorship program for girls journeying through adolescence. They face harsh realities, and usually have no one to turn to that will help them solve their problems. Through Shakti we will implement a multifold approach in helping girls, where girls are: connected to a peer network; supported and empowered to recognise risk and develop strategies to resist pressures of child marriage, dangerous work, and being pulled out of school; provided access to services; trained to negotiate for themselves and develop healthy relationships; supported to articulate aspirations and take steps towards achieving their life goals. The peer network that provides the girls a safe space to talk about their lives is the foundation of the Shakti program.

The Shakti program holds adolescent girl’s safety as the utmost priority. The goal is to target some of the most difficult areas to support, and empower children, families, communities and government authorities to recognize the risks for violence, abuse, exploitation, neglect and exclusion from services that children face and to know how to prevent them.

Each Shakti Circle identifies 1 top community safety issue and develops a Community Project to address it. Shakti Leaders work with the girls to establish the necessary support from local service providers, government, and police to complete the project and achieve the girls’ safety goals. Shakti empowers the girls to firstly identify what is making their community unsafe, and helping them work together to make it safer.

The girls coming for Shakti are completely aware of all the dangers surrounding them. They know about trafficking, they know about the frustrations of getting married young, about sexual abuse, about being harassed by men. What they want from us is the tools and the skills to tackle these perils. They want to know how to be assertive, how to refuse, how to stand up for themselves and the other girls around them.

The support available through Shakti Circles for young girls, with education on self development enables them to take control of their lives. Parents of Shakti girls likewise benefit from awareness about the various government support programs and schemes that relieve the burden on parents trying to make their daughters’ bright futures possible.