GIRL CHILD EDUCATION !

      GIRL CHILD EDUCATION-Pooja Sarkar 

Every day, girls face barriers to education caused by poverty, cultural norms and practices, poor infrastructure, violence and fragility. Therefore, here at HEEALS, GIRLS’ EDUCATION is a priority.

“Education is one thing no one can take away from you”- Elin Nordegren . Also, as rightly said in the African proverb, ‘‘if you educate a man, you educate an individual. But if you educate a woman, you educate a nation.”

Girls’ education goes beyond getting girls into school, it is ensuring that girls learn and feel safe while in the school. Education is the key for women to achieve economic independence. It is also ensuring that girl child complete all levels of education with the rightful skills necessary to navigate and adapt to the changing world. That the education give them the freedom of making their own rightful decisions about their life and also contribute to the communities and the world.

Although women in the majority of countries have the right to education, the problem lies in the equal access to education. In many developing countries, millions of women do not complete their education because they are forced by their society, by their circumstances or by the threat of violence to focus on household or care giving. Better educated women tend to be healthier, earn higher incomes and participative. They enable better education for their children and better health care. All these factors combined can lift not only their households but also their communities and the nations out of poverty and social norms.

HEEALS is a Non Profit Organization which aims to safeguard health, environment, education and livelihood to promote sustainable development of society. Poverty remains the most important factor for determining whether a girl can access an education. Studies show that girls who face multiple disadvantages such as low family income, living in remote areas or locations, disability due to belongingness to a minority group , are the farthest behind in terms of access to completion of education. These factors affect negatively in the access of education. Another example is Child Marriage which is also a critical challenge. Child brides are more likely to drop out of schools and look after the family. This affects the education and health of the children as well as their ability to earn a living. There are many reports showing that around 40000 girls under the age of 18 years get married every day. This should be put to an end to increase women’s expected education attainment and their earnings.

Every day Girls face barriers to education due to many reasons caused by poverty, cultural norms, poor infrastructure, and many more reasons we are unheard of. HEEALS with its volunteers and interns from different regions are working together with girls and women and through the medium of Documentary films and art is trying to create awareness among the masses about girl child education , menstrual hygiene , sanitation and safe drinking water and trying to relate how girl child education id also directly related to poor sanitation facilities, unsafe drinking water and lack of knowledge to obtain the same.

HEEALS relies on our generous sponsors and donors in order to be able to run our workshops and provide the facilities. If you are interested in providing financial support for our projects and  workshops and to know more about projects like our ‘Pads for Girls’ project, please connect with communications@heeals.org. You can also support girls in menstruation and eduaction by talking and creating awareness among them. Also, create awareness among your families, friends and neighbours.

Here at HEEALS, projects focus on Targeting boys and men to be a part of discussions about cultural and social practices and ending child/ early marriage and addressing violence against girls and women.

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DONATORS LOCATED IN INDIA

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INTERNATIONAL DONATORS

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World Toilet Day ! 19th November 2019

World Toilet Day, celebrated on 19th November every year, is about inspiring action to tackle the global sanitation crisis and help achieve Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6, which promises sanitation for all by 2030.

Theme of World Toilet Day -2019 is Leaving no one behind.

A toilet is not just a toilet. It’s a life-saver, dignity-protector and opportunity-maker.

Whoever you are, wherever you are, sanitation is your human right. And yet, today, 4.2 billion people live without safely managed sanitation.

How can anyone lift themselves out of poverty without sanitation? We must expand access to safe toilets and leave no one behind.

Key Facts !

4.2 billion people live without safely managed sanitation – more than half the global population.

673 million people still practise open defecation worldwide.

Globally, at least 2 billion people use a drinking water source contaminated with faeces.

Inadequate sanitation is estimated to cause 432,000 diarrhoeal deaths every year and is a major factor in diseases such as intestinal worms and trachoma.

Children under the age of five living in countries affected by protracted conflict are, on average, nearly 20 times more likely to die from diarrhoeal diseases caused by a lack of safe water, sanitation and hygiene than by direct violence. (UNICEF )

19th November 2018 World Toilet Day

We organized WASH Workshops In Schools & Distributed Soap Bars and Hand Wash Posters

Theme : “When nature Calls”

We need a toilet. But billions of people don’t have one.This means human faeces, on a massive scale, is not being captured or treated – contaminating the water and soil that sustain human life. We are turning our environment into an open sewer.We must build toilets and sanitation systems that work in harmony with ecosystems.World Toilet Day is about nature-based solutions to our sanitation needs. When nature calls we have to listen and act.

World Toilet Day, celebrated on 19th November, is about taking action to ensure that everyone has a safe toilet by 2030. This is part of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG)6 : Sanitation & Water

62% People around the world don’t have access to safe sanitation

892 Million people practice open defecation.

4.5 Billion people live without safe Toilet

1.8 Billion people use a drinking water source that could be contaminated with faeces

Come Join Us Today ! In Our WASH Project .

Email : communications@heeals.org 

The Thorn in India’s Environmental Side: Open Defecation and a Review of Swachh Bharat

Happy World Environment Day from all of us here at HEEALS! In honour of this important day, this blog post will reflect on India as this year’s global host for World Environment Day, with specific focus on The Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation’s “Swachh Bharat Mission”, and it’s goal of making India Open Defecation Free (ODF) by 2019.

India is the open defecation capital of the world, with just under half of the population - 564 million people - unable or unwilling to use a toilet.^[1] Beyond the obvious and devastating impacts that this has on Indian health, open defecation is a serious environmental concern for several reasons. Human waste introduces toxins and bacteria into the ecosystem that cannot be broken down in a sustainable time, relative to the amount that they are released. This buildup of microbes harms aquatic systems and the life that occupy them. Open defecation also contributes to eutrophication, preventing light diffusion and oxygen from reaching life underwater. Above the surface, even the smell of human waste in excess pollutes the surrounding air.^[2] One often hears of open defecation from the perspective of it's health impacts, and for good reason; However, regarding open defecation from an environmental lens provides a more nuanced and complex perspective to the issue.

On October 2nd, 2014, the Prime Minister of India launched the “Swachh Bharat Mission” with the objective of facilitating a clean and ODF country over a five-year time span. The strategy for implementing this massive task includes augmenting the institutional capacity of districts to allow for behaviour change activities at the grassroots level. The program also intended on providing more flexibility to states, so as to incentivize local communities based on individual context and maximize coverage.^[3] The mission places priority on facilitating behaviour change, as many rural communities are unaware of the health and environmental impacts of open defecation, and therefore see it as more convenient than using a toilet.

So, with just over a year left until the projected “ODF India”, let’s explore how the project has performed; The Swachh Bharat website suggests the facilitation of 17 ODF states since 2014, with a grand total of 73,680,690 household toilets built since October 2014.^[4] The mission has reached 62.48% of its goal, and while nowhere near the projected 100% ODF, one must commend the mission on having made it this far. With a population size like India’s, making any claim for completeness - especially regarding something as ingrained in society as open defecation - is quite unlikely to be achieved. Nonetheless, 62.48% is quite significant. The five districts with the highest ODF coverage are ordered as follows: A & N Islands, Arunachal Pradesh, Chandigard, Chattisgarh, and D & N Haveli.

Now for the projects downfalls. For a project that claimed to give more autonomy to individual states, there is a significant gap in the project implementation that leaves Low-Income States (LIS) behind. The four listed LIS - Assam, Bihar, Jharkhand and Uttar Pradesh - lack the same progress as their neighbouring states in terms of ODF districts. For example, of the 33 districts in Assam, only 11 were declared ODF, and the verification information is not listed on the website. In Uttar Pradesh, only 7 out of 75 states were declared ODF, and of those 7, only 2 were actually verified ODF.^[5] This is in comparison to states such as Haryana, Gujarat and Chattisgarh, where 100% of districts were both declared and verified as being ODF.

While it makes sense to contextualize local realities by regulating Swachh Bharat at a state level, it does not help to ignore state capacity in the process- without aiding Low-Income States reach the same level of progress as those more capable, Swachh Bharat becomes less of a national mission, and more of a fragmented mission open to states who are able to implement it properly.

This World Environment Day, let us reflect on our own individual capacities to do better for our world, and take these capacities into account in our advocacy work. Let us raise each other up in the process of creating a better and more sustainable planet. Happy World Environment Day!

-Jayde 

WASH and Menstrual Hygiene Intern Coordinator

source:

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^[1] http://www.teamswachhbharat.in/get-the-facts.php

^[2] https://www.conserve-energy-future.com/how-open-defecation-affect-human-health-environment-and-solutions.php

^[3] http://swachhbharatmission.gov.in/sbmcms/index.htm

^[4] http://swachhbharatmission.gov.in/sbmcms/index.htm

^[5] https://sbm.gov.in/sbmReport/Report/Physical/SBM_VillageODFMarkStatus.aspx