The Crucible of Truth

If you have come to help me, you are wasting your time.
But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine,
then let us work together.
--- Lila Watson

They’re not coming, I thought. I was sitting in the dark outside the community hall, the site for the formation of the first Life Skills Self Help Group (SHG) for adolescent girls in Malpor, a poor, Adivasi village in rural Gujarat, India. It was the second month of my Indicorps Fellowship. Just the week prior, the girls had decided they were ready to meet formally as a group. And so there I was, waiting for our first meeting to convene. Alone.

That night, only four girls came. A month later, the group was officially born, but not without its share of difficulties. Meetings rarely started on time, and attendance was erratic. I fumbled awkwardly with my Gujarati. Investment levels were abysmally low. Frustrated by my inefficacy, I almost gave up.

Yet, despite virtually insurmountable odds, my love for the girls didn’t allow me to succumb. After holding meetings for a month, I realized how ego-centric I had been despite my intent to build a liberatory space with my girls, not for them. I lamented over low investment levels, but I never gave the girls an opportunity to take ownership over the group. I sought to empower the group, but I didn’t realize that it wasn’t enough to simply talk about empowerment. The girls needed to concretely apply concepts to real-life contexts. They needed to start by building something as a group that they could call their own.

And so we started building. On March 3rd, 2007, International Women’s Day, the group hosted a historic event. For the first time in their lives, the girls held a microphone and performed in front of more than 500 community members. From then on, the group ran on its own inertia. On World Health Day, we held an Arogya Mela, where the girls educated their village about community health. Empowered by their newfound knowledge of the link between sanitation and disease, the girls initiated a long-term, village-level sanitation campaign, through which they conducted bi-weekly clean-ups, administered a sanitation survey, held a sanitation rally, and enacted a street play on the theme. Using the profits earned from sales at the Arogya Mela as seed money, the girls initiated a savings arm of the group, spurring the formation of three more SHGs for women within the community.

By the end of my fellowship year, the girls were making decisions and taking ownership over their lives. Jamna took a loan from the group’s savings account to continue her education. Anjana convinced her grandmother to stop chewing tobacco after learning about its adverse effects on health. Nita taught her neighbor how to make a remedy to rehydrate an infant suffering from diarrhea.

But it wasn’t just the girls who grew – with each step they took forward, I took one with them. I started the year on a mission to empower adolescent girls, but I ended it with the understanding that the most powerful form of empowerment lay nestled within my love for my girls, a love that made us believe in our potential to be more than we could ever have imagined.

Prerna Srivastava
Indicorps Fellow 2006-2007