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Chosen districts for the Vidyanjali Village Reading groups: Warrangal & Rangareddy district.
ISSUES AFFECTING THE VILLAGERS INCLUDE:
HEALTH & ITS EFFECT ON EMPLOYMENT & INCOME
The diet eaten for years has made them malnourished and susceptible to various diseases causing set back to their health and expenditure treatments.
If women are taught to start various livelihood activities at home, they will start earning small amounts. When their earning grows their first priority obviously would be health and nutrition of their children and the family.
Thus the employment and improved income situation will have the direct positive impact on health improvement of village communities.
HIV & AIDS
The villagers vaguely know that it is a killer disease. But the details are not known to them, and awareness has to be promoted. The villagers are at risk to HIV & AIDS. Men are more aware than women about HIV/AIDS and are getting themselves treated if the tests show that they are HIV positive. But they must make women aware of it. By keeping women in the dark, they are increasing the risk of spreading it through women
ISSUES BETWEEN MEN AND WOMEN
These are the issues that most concerned the women in the project village.
- Female foeticide
- Lack of access to education, health, nutrition to a Girl-child
- Lower wages at work
- Women’s workload both at home and in fields
- Lack of sanitary facilities
- Discrimination between male and female child
- Early marriage
- Domestic Violence
- Sexual abuse
- Family planning
- HIV & AIDS
- Ownership rights to property
- Men want women to remain as the weaker sex always
LITERACY
Literacy is not felt to be the first priority for adults. For children (including girl-children), school education is compulsory in Andhra Pradesh. For this, various programmes like ‘Back to school’, ‘Bridge school’, etc. have been started by the government to attract the drop-outs to join schools and get into mainstream learning. Our partner organizations are working to encourage such small children, both girls and boys, to help them join back the mainstream education.
The reading clubs will help them become literate, if they want to. The people we talked to definitely showed interest in our books that are developed specially for them.
We hope that as a result of our programme, we will be able to increase the literacy rate amongst women.
Find out more about the need for Literacy Development
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