Shabnam, formerly a teacher, is our Community Correspondent from Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh. Being denied a much-deserved scholarship for completing matriculation with first division just because she came from a Muslim family did not stop Shabnam from pursuing higher education. Now the first graduate in her family, Shabnam believes that she has fulfilled her father’s dreams. Threatened by her progressive educational background,…
13-year-old Nirama lives in Movaiya village, Varanasi district, Uttar Pradesh where 500 people have no access to basic sanitation facilities. For Nirama, having to relieve herself in the open is an added challenge as she is visually impaired. She is afraid of being teased and more seriously, of being sexually or physically harmed. The Indian government’s Total Sanitation Campaign (TSC) provides funds for constructing basic sanitation facilities for people just like Nirama.
We need your help to put pressure on the Village Head to get residents of Movaiya these funds and to start work on building these toilets now:
Call to Action:
Please call the Village Head, Atma Patel on 9554650600.
VV-PACS Correspondent Shabanam Begum interviews Nirama who tells her that she has to rely on her on mother or sister to assist her to a safe place outside to relieve herself. Nirama worries for her safety. She tells us the dangers—
recently a girl from the village was raped whilst going to the toilet outside.
Sangeeta Devi, another resident of the village explains how the womenfear going to anyone’s field as they are verbally abused and thus go near a road when it’s dark.
“What if when we go out to urinate and a boy comes and rapes us, what will we do?” she tells Shabanam.
After further enquiry with Correspondent Shabanam,we discover that the residents have informed the Village Head many times about the matter. However the Village Head seems to be unaware of what is actually happening to his people. He doesn’t really know what he should do about it. That is why we need your help to ask the Village Head to take this matter seriously and provide toilets for the people living there.
You can make a change. Help Nirama get access to a safe and clean toilet NOW!
Watch more videos like this by clicking on this
link.
More information on the status of Uttar Pradesh’s sanitation standards can be found in this
article.
No Cards
The article argues that systematically ignoring and silencing the voices of the poor and marginalized worldwide does not serve society or democracy well and must be countered. While new technologies such as AI could provide an opportunity for change, we contend that these technologies need to account more effectively for...
Impact Story
When the staff at Gannett newspapers in the US coined the term MOJO (Mobile Journalism) to describe new ways of gathering and distributing news using emerging technologies in 2005, they would not have imagined its virality and use ten years later. Ask new media journalists and our Community Correspondents Shah...