In spite of . . . and because of . . .

Written by Shereen Arent

There aren’t words to describe what I feel to be back in India seeing Sambhali Trust’s programs first-hand—embracing friends, meeting new staff and women in the programs, seeing how the boarding home girls have grown. 

With covid rates so low in India, these last two years can begin to feel like just a bad nightmare. Except the reality is everywhere. It’s in every hand raised when I ask the adolescent girls at the Fatima Empowerment Center how many of them were in school before the pandemic. I see eight hands of  girls who were told that after schools being closed for nearly two years they were not allowed to go back. And yet . . .  

I see the joy as they along with older women embrace the opportunity to be at Fatima, to learn sewing, to take classes in Hindi, math, and English from Anju and learn sewing from Mumtaz—both of whom first joined Sambhali Trust as students themselves. 

There is happiness in being with new friends…

Beauty in learning….

And in teaching…

And in knowing the many sides of ourselves.

Here is Mumtaz as serious sewing teacher..

And Mumtaz whose voice is the essence of joy and power at the Sambhali Trust march on International Women’s Day.

I travel up the steep and windy road to the other side of the Mehrangarh Fort that towers over Jodhpur to where the Laadli Empowerment Center is now located. It is there because of the pandemic, because a group of women learned of the Sambhali food bank and made their way over the steep hill where they received food, learned about Sambhali Trust, and found the courage to ask Sambhali to set up an empowerment center in their neighborhood.

There I am reunited with Asha, a wonderful teacher who used to work at Fatima, and who has taken on the challenge of this new center. Asha also tells me that because of the pandemic she is now a better teacher.

Asha explains the challenges the women and girls at the Laadli Empowerment Center face, including that most have almost no formal education and all live in poverty. She tells me domestic violence is a regular part of their lives, but that through workshops and her guidance they have learned that their husbands do not have a right to beat them. They also know Sambhali Trust has a lawyer and a psychologist who are there to help them, staff members who were added to Sambhali staff because of the pandemic and the need to find new ways to respond to the growth of gender-based violence that was deemed “the shadow pandemic”.

And yet, Asha understands why they her students are afraid to seek help. Slowly, slowly Asha explains, we gain trust and with that there will be first steps to claim the right to live without violence.

Before I go, Asha introduces me to Anita. Prior to the pandemic, Anita had  finished 11th grade but was not allowed to return when schools reopened. But her father agreed she could learn sewing at Fatima. Asha tells me how Sambhali staff are slowly and carefully talking to her family so that she might return to school later this year and graduate. Then there is a face and a name and a bright light through the pain the pandemic has caused. 

But Anita wouldn’t be at a Sambhali center had it not been for the pandemic.

 In spite of . . . and because of . . . over and over and over again.