A cluster of small houses can be seen in a neat row in Sherganj, ward no. 15 in Kawasoti Municipality, and hence also known by the name ‘Musahar community’ for the locals. Very cheerful Khima Musahar, 15 years old empower girls in her community. Khima and her family members were working together when I met her; it is amazing to find the open-mindedness and perspective of a very well-exposed family where each member chooses to believe in their own abilities and is always willing to lend a helping hand to another member of the family.
With a focus on empowering girls in her community of Sherganj, our peer educator Khima Musahar identified the students who were at risk of dropping out and made the decision to encourage them to return to school. “Our Musahar community is considered a marginalized community and falls under the backward community in Kawasoti Municipality due to many different reasons It has fallen behind in terms of education, opportunities, politics, culture, and so on. Most notably, education is falling behind,” Khima added.
Khima has really shown courage and strength by initiating an enrollment drive for her community’s school drop-out girls and held a meeting with Ms. Meena Kumari Musahar, Sherganj’s public representative. Khima believes that as a peer educator for the ‘Girl’s Empowerment Programme, it is her responsibility to make people aware of the importance of education and provide them with the opportunity to become better people. She began writing down the names of students who skipped school and proceeded to call their parents, and she successfully released the school drop-out enrollment drive. She believes that a quality education can empower the majority of the youth and that it is not only the responsibility of the government but also of social activists like herself, to empower the youth by taking an initiative.
“I am strongly committed to youth empowerment in both public and political life, and I believe that youth empowerment is extremely important to development,” Khima says. It’s terribly sad to see young people drop out of school, so whenever I have the chance to encourage them, I give it my everyone to motivate them to do better. I hope that with my contributions, we can focus on ensuring that our youths get a proper education and can make a better life for themselves.”
With all smiles and emotions, she smiles at me and says a very inspiring line:
“I am overjoyed that I have succeeded in enrolling and returning our community’s children to school. The children are also attending school, and their parents are pleased. “Even if they feel they have very little information about a subject, I would encourage people to take initiation as much as possible because you can still make a big difference and you will learn a lot.”