Village belles with stars in their eyes

Taking the path untrodden is no easy task, especially when you’ve been told your whole life that you can’t do it. But there are no fears as Project DEFY, a community center in Karnataka, has created a unique opportunity to scale new heights with their “Waking Dreams Fellowship”. Their initiative will help six young women to follow their dreams, breaking the barriers that these Kaggalipura girls have grown up with. 

This crowd funded fellowship will be the beginning for Deepika, Monisha, Sumalatha, Ramya, Swathi, and Nandini who have shown a distinctive quality by dreaming the unthinkable for themselves. Project DEFY is the brainchild of Abhijit Sinha who after a small stint with engineering decided to pursue something with meaning. Megha Sharma Bhagat who joined him in his initiative to encourage self-learning among children and young adults explains how women were far more capable of being torchbearers in anything that they chose to do. “For three years we have been working with youngsters to help them self learn and create their own learning path. Women especially if given opportunities have been more enterprising and gone on ahead and chosen paths that are more sustainable. In that context, with this fellowship we wanted to create role models in the villages that we work in to help people come out of the traditional, patriarchal system. We want to give young women, who are just coming out of school and college systems, a year to explore what they want to do before there is s pressure to get married or settling for something lesser.”

At the end of the one year fellowship the girls will be capable of making important decisions for themselves. Megha says, “The young women we spoke to have unconventional dreams. While Monisha aspires to stage a violin musical and Nandini wants to make a film about child brides, Ramya wants to learn belly dancing and open an academy for girls in the village! The fact that these girls were pushing the boundaries and were ready to work inspite of any family or societal pressures that may come their way, made them perfect candidates to work closely with us.”

The support that they receive is quite remarkable and a nice feeling too as Deepika Sureshram says,“I want to take my jewellery making business to online vendors and help create job opportunities for the women in my village.”This crowdfunded effort has sparked interest in several others who will be able to directly coach the girls. Rajiv Shankar, the communications head of Project DEFY, “A lot of people have come forward to mentor the girls. Their determination to learn has helped them get the support of other individuals who will be able to guide and train them in their respective choices.”