"I believe I will be a change maker"

Shova, a 19 years old girl, lives in one of Dhaka slum with her parents and other two sisters. They are in total six sisters (she is the 4^th daughter), but three of them already got married. Her father is a shopkeeper and her mother is housewife.

Through “Jukta hoe Mukta – United We Stand” project, ARBAN started motivating adolescent girls living in the slum to join a virtual network to share different kind of information. 20 Team Leaders and 200 Normal Phone Holders (NPHs) have been selected through some viva exam. Each Team Leader is supervising and coordinating 10 NPHs and, in their turn, each NPH other 10 girls without any phone, for a total of 2,220 girls connected.

After joining as a Team Leader, Shova got different training like Participatory Action Research (PAR) training, training on how to use the mobile App and how the virtual network is functioning, etc. She actively participated and collected different information during the PAR survey as a volunteer researcher. At the present she is properly working with responsibility, she is organizing meetings with the NPHs, she is regularly dealing with them, and she is properly communicating with the other 19 Team Leaders. Through the project she got a smart phone for using the App and mobilizing/ raising awareness while communicating with other Team Leaders and NPHs. She actually has to disseminate the information related to the project, and mobilize and raise the awareness of the adolescents in the community by using the “Jukta Hoe Mukta” App.

Now she is vocal and aware about her rights. At the beginning, when she joined as Team Leader, she was a simple adolescent girl, she didn’t know how to use the smart phone and any App, how to communicate and motivate other girls, how to lead her team. Now she can do all these things. It is a good transformation for her. Now her parents are very satisfied and they say “Now our daughter is conscious about her rights, she studies hard, she is attending different meetings/ training sessions, leading and sharing her decisions and she shows us a better way in the family. It’s really a wonderful transformation! We are really proud of her!”

Recently she passed the Higher Secondary Examination and she got the Higher Secondary Certificate (H.S.C.). Now she is searching a good institute where getting a Higher Degree. For this reason, she is studying hard against the upcoming admission test. She is dreaming she will be a good social worker and she will be able to raise her voice against gender discrimination and violence against women.