Shaista's Next Step on the Way to Making the Kolkata Slums a Safer Place for Girls and Women

Yesterday, the Kolkata branch of the Nivedita Shakti, a women's empowerment movement, presented an award to 19 year old Shaista Shamim.  The  literature states that she "successfully completed High School examination with 1st Division and is now taking up the onus of educating girls like her with great pain".  But there is so much more to Shaista's story than that.  I quote here from Shafkat Alam, who has been teacher and mentor to Shaista over the years

"Shaista Shamim is the second child in her family. She has 4 sisters and 1 brother. Her father is a labourer in the Bantala Kolkata Leather Complex factory and mom does odd stitching work for additional income to run the family.

Shaista lives in the Tiljala Darapara slum, one of the biggest slums in Kolkata Metropolitan area. She has been living here since her childhood. She is the brightest and the most ambitious child in her family. She became Gyan Azhar Library member in 2008 when she was a small child. Since then she got in contact with Tiljala SHED officials and eventually she was noticed by the officials of Tiljala SHED when she was a frontline participant in a series of events at the Gyan Azhar Library and many more events. She represented Tiljala SHED in many events and won many recognitions and appreciations. She aspires to become IPS (Indian Police Service) officer and serve the Kolkata city to eradicate the crimes especially on girls. The Tiljala Darapara area which is full of crimes like eve teasing, molestation and sometimes rape......Eve Teasing, passing lewd comments, voyeurism, sometimes stopping your way by youths not letting you walk unless you hear......Shaista is frustrated and irritated...Most of these local boys' families belong to an influential political club of the area and they get their immunity. She has protested on her personal level...direct confrontation with many but there has not been much significant improvement. If you go to police then you are actually jeopardizing your entire family's life...the political club members have a very strong hold in that area and you may be mentally tortured and even physically......so all these risks are involved....

She wants to be IPS so that she can eradicate all this nonsense in her area at first and then for the entire city.

She has taken a pledge to eradicate eve teasing and other crimes on women. She belongs to an area where eve teasing is a daily affair and domestic and other kinds of violence are a regular offence.

She did not do well in Class X and scored a mere 38% but in Class she found her mentor and Shafkat Alam and his team assisted her in possible ways to give her a proper direction to improve her academics. She scored 62.5% in her Higher Secondary exams- a big jump in her marks. She completed her Class XII from Anjuman Islamia Girls Higher Secondary School- A government Urdu medium school.

She also got admitted to Bhawanipur College in Political Science Honors through Tiljala SHED network with full scholarship from the College. A girl from a government urdu medium school to English medium Bhawanipur College (top 3 college in Kolkata)....it is a very big jump in her life....and she is taking this opportunity to change her life.

All her siblings are studying and she is the game changer in her family. She expect to change the fortune of her family by becoming an IPS family, a first from her family to enter into the civil services. Her family comes from a remote place in Bihar and it will be considered to be a very big change breaking all the stereotypes in her family.

She loves sports, loves dancing, swimming and loves to talk. She is an extrovert and loves to make friends. She loves Mushaira and regularly participates in Mushairas (rhyming poetries) in Urdu (composed by famous Mirza Ghalib, allama Iqbal and others)....”

True impact for organisations like Tiljala SHED which work in the most marginalised and deprived communities, is often driven not by outside forces (philanthropists, social workers, policy changes, legislation) but by determined and charismatic individuals from within the community itself.  Individuals with the courage and imagination to say "Enough!"

Despite her young age, her deprived background, her deficient school education, Shaista has fought every step of the way to get to this point.  And she still has a long way to go.  She has the full  backing of Tiljala SHED  and is also sponsored by a couple from Germany who met her many years ago and saw that she could use the support.

Shaista has the character, the drive and the support to change women's lives far beyond the place and time in which she now lives.   And it is Tiljala SHED's privilege and responsibility to see that Shaista is not thwarted by the banalities of discrimination or lack of funds.

But there are others like Shaista.  I meet them every time I visit Kolkata - and they need your support too.  It costs just Rs1000  $15 or £11 a month to keep a child in school, to offer after school remedial support and the opportunity to change lives.

To support another determined young person like Shaista
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