a campaign to install commodes in individ-
ual homes. That effort aims to address two
issues at once: the village’s chronic problem
of drunken and sometimes harassing men
and the broader national health challenge
of ending “open defecation.”
They’ve also targeted issues specific to
them as adolescent girls. They persuaded
district health officials to stock modern
sanitary napkins in the nearest clinic as a
replacement for traditional cloth rags. In
a country where child marriage remains a
national scourge (despite a law prohibiting
the marriage of girls under age 18), club
members have publicly pledged not just to
renounce the practice for themselves but
to come to the rescue of anyone they know
being pushed into an early union.
Through all the activism, the girls are
developing vital leadership skills. Malarvizhi
Pandurangan says the girls club’s successes
have taught her that organizing and speak-
ing up works, so she’s taken her advocacy
to her technical secondary school, where
she’s deepening her math skills and learning
about electrical circuitry.
“I tell the girls in my class about all the
services our club has brought to my vil-
lage, and I say we can improve our school
in the same way if we work together,” says
Malarvizhi, standing in one of the spare
classrooms of the Thiruvalluvar Technical
Institute.
Outside, separate classes of girls
and boys assemble on the dusty
ground under the shade of thin-leaved
trees to study for upcoming exams.
Inside, girls whisper and giggle as
Malarvizhi shares with a visitor how
she’s organizing her classmates to
lobby local businesses to provide the
school with better equipment.
Thiruvalluvar’s principal, Vazha
Jayachandran, attests to Malarvizhi’s
leadership, and adds that all 40 girls
at the institute are helping to infuse
the school with more energy and ac-
ademic rigor.
“Five years ago we didn’t even have
girls here,” he notes, “and now they
are almost always the strongest in our
subjects and produce the best results.”What’s remarkable about the girls of
Thennamadevi isn’t just what they’ve
accomplished. It’s what they’ve ac-
complished given where they’re from.
The Viluppuram district, with itsweb of rail connections, is a hub of child
trafficking and sex trafficking. The district
records some of India’s highest levels of child
abuse, according to local officials and NGOs.
“People don’t easily talk about these
problems, making addressing them all the
more difficult,” says Sathiya Babu, manag-
ing trustee of Viluppuram’s office of Scope
India, which shelters runaway and trafficked
kids and works with local communities to
improve children’s living conditions.
“But we’re finding that the kids, and the
girls especially, are determined to build bet-
ter lives and are no longer accepting the
traditional limitations their communities,
even their own parents, are putting on
them,” he says.
In many ways, Thennamadevi is a typical
village for the area, Dr. Babu says, but in
others – both good and bad – it stands out.
“Most of the men there are alcoholics –
that’s not so unusual – but one result is that
90 families in the village are run by widows.
That’s a situation that aggravates existing
challenges in the area,” he adds, “from child
abuse and runaways to child marriage. A
mother who can’t support all her children
may see the girls as either a financial burden
or even as a source of income” – for example
through a dowry, even though dowries are
outlawed in India, he says.
Still, Babu notes, Thennamadevi’s girls
are unusual because in less than two years
they have taken their club from a venue
for discussing problems to one for taking
action.
“Last year the girls there requested that
the club organize a meeting where they
could learn how to petition the government,”
VNEXT PAGE‘I’m going to make
[my career goal]
come true, just
as the girls of
Thennamadevi
are making true
our dream of
building a model
village!’
- Bharati Murugan,
treasurer of the local girls club
Bharati Murugan, treasurer of the Thennamadevi girls club, stands next to her coveted bicycle,
which she cherishes because it gives her a sense of independence. She says she wants to join
HOWARD LAFRANCHI/THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR India’s civil service, an unheard-of dream for a girl from a poor rural village.