Yet when Anannya first heard about the UNICEF-supported training from her mother, Ranoty Rani, she was skeptical.
“I was nervous about what people would think, what the community would think,” remembers Anannya.
What were once her worries stemmed from growing up in a community where physical exercises were not traditionally seen as ‘fit’ for girls. Many leaders, families and parents would flinch at the idea of girls exercising and practicing sports, let alone learning martial arts for self-defense. Such reluctance does not bode well for the safety of children in the country, where poverty, harmful social norms, and gender inequality are among the factors brewing violent incidents hurting them, especially girls.
“When we try to organize the self-defense training, there are parents who were not supportive,” explains Nasima Aktar, a UNICEF-supported community mobilizer. “Sometimes, the fathers do not want to give the opportunities to their daughters to learn self-defense.”
Nasima is determined to change that reality. Along with other community mobilizers, she spends days and months walking from door to door to get to know each family, conducting surveys to understand their beliefs and behaviors, and delivering awareness sessions to persuade parents otherwise.
When parents are not convinced, she shows them Public Service Announcements on incidents of attacks, rape, or child marriages.
“If this were your daughter, what would you do?” asked Nasima.
Trust in community mobilizers
When Nasima knocked on the door of Anannya’s home, a small room enclosed by walls of rough bricks, Rani had just started shouldering responsibilities for her three children as a single mother after her husband had suddenly died. Working as a cleaner most days, Rani often thought about her children. She felt a pang of guilt: to feed her children and provide them with an education, she could neither spend quality time with them nor ensure that they were safe.
“Our area is not safe for my girls because of some bad people in our local area,” shares Rani.