Mothers play a great role in the overall development of a child. So, if we want to develop the future of the children, the mothers should be equally educated. Keeping this in mind, we started two Adult education centers at Sagar Block’s Rudranagar GP and Muriganga 1 GP with total45 women. In the first year, some of the women were hesitant to join classes as they thought it’s the age of their children to go to schools and not them. However, when they saw other women taking benefits from the lessons learned in the Education centers, few others also came out of their comfort zone and joined the classes. In this year, we have been able to add 32 more women in the classes of both the GPs. Our Animators cum teachers regularly counseled the left out women to join the classes so that they can at least learn the basic knowledge required for their daily lives. They were taught to write their names, construct sentences, basic mathematics and little bit of general knowledge that will help in their daily lives. They were also taught how to prepare low cost nutritious foods, importance of using sanitary or pit type latrine, how to prepare safe drinking water, maintaining personal hygiene, proper disposal of waste products and why it is important to keep space between the births of two children.

Apart from this, the women were informed about the importance of biodiversity conservation and how they can contribute towards the conservation. They were asked to plant small trees around their houses and nurture them with water regularly. We encouraged them for kitchen gardening. The women were informed about the benefits of growing fresh and clean vegetables which would add nutritional value to their daily diet. We tried to make them understand how kitchen gardening would contribute to their food security and they can grow it even in old utensils, empty tins and clay flower pots. The whole family could contribute to this environment friendly practice.

Women are always attracted to their art and culture in any society but these women were not able to find time to practice their local folk culture. So, we also encouraged them to get involved into some cultural activities to which will strengthen the bond among the community and keep their culture alive too.          

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