International Women's Day

Cholapur Village, outside of Varanasi, is one of many locations throughout the world that celebrates International Women's Day. This tradition, in its third year, started with the launch of the Vidya Gyan scholarship program, the project I am working on during my time here. I spent last week in Varanasi doing field research (interviews, observing, data collection, etc) so I had the honor of attending the celebration.

Under a white tent in one of the village school yards, about 500 students, parents, grandparents, school teachers, principals, and community leaders gathered. The program was a blend of speeches from community leaders, dances performed by the scholarship program participants, and chants of empowerment.

It was really incredible and having the honor of attending is without doubt one of the highlights of my time here in India. The energy of the girls in this program is amazing- they are all poor, most have uneducated families, and they all deal with discrimination for their caste or religion. The confidence they possess to perform and share their stories is a result of being in the scholarship program. In addition to receiving financial support for their studies, they also attend daily two hour coaching sessions for tutoring, talk about issues they are facing, dancing, singing, and arts & crafts. Puja is a Class VIII (8th grade) student in her third year of the Vidya Gyan program. With the help of the coaching sessions she realized her talent and passion for Indian dancing. At last year's celebration she danced for the first time in front of a crowd. When she returned home that evening her father and brothers beat her and the Vidya Gyan staff had to intervene. This year her performance was the program finale!

Throughout the event the MC would yell 'Mahila Ekla' and the crowd would chant back 'Jindabad,' which translates to 'Women's equality is immortal.' I was asked to share a few words with crowd (with the help of a translator, of course) and I ended by having the crowd chant "Women Unite." They yelled with energy and enthusiasm; I wish I could have bottled it- such an incredible moment.

I am not sure if the pictures will do the event justice, but you can check them out here. I will post the rest of the pictures from my visit in the next week.

In Indian current events, this Women's Day was particularly significant because the lower house passed the Women's Reservation Bill which will secure one third of all parliament seats women. The bill passed after seven representatives were physically removed from the legislative assembly. You can read more about it here.