'Girl protection, empowerment under threat globally'

Stating that protection and empowerment of minor girls all over the world is increasingly under threat, American activist and professor Geraldine Forbes on Wednesday said the first step towards youth empowerment would be to give young people a right to express their views and make them active participants in the reception and dissemination of information.

"In today's time, fight for the protection of a girl child and her rights as a youth is far more challenging than ever. In my view, the young people should be given a right to express their views and should be listened to with more dignity and respect. The youth empowerment is possible if they are allowed to actively participate in receiving and disseminating information about the society," Forbes said during a session here with adolescent girls of the state working as community reporters.

Talking at the interactive session, the Professor of History in the State University of New York at Oswego appreciated the initiative saying this brand of journalism would be the future in bringing out the untold stories of struggle and oppression.

"I am amazed by the passion and intent of these budding reporters. This brand of journalism is really the future. It is important because youths all over the world think that people of their age are the most suitable to understand and talk about their problems," Forbes said.

"Given the kind of attack on women and on the people who speak out about the social evils, the opportunity to report on an issue of their community is a form of empowerment for the girls," she said.

Forbes said the empowerment of youth also requires overcoming several obstacles of social and cultural norms and convincing the family members to let the youth freely interact with the society.

Jabala Action Research Organisation, the NGO that trained the girls in writing media reports on their community, said the initiative has served a two-fold purpose -- empowering the teenage girls and bringing out the news reports that are otherwise not highlighted in mainstream media.

"We train the teenage girls on collection of evidence, report-writing and distinguish news from misinformation or propaganda. We also arrange periodical meetings between the girls and the local administration so that they can highlight and validate news. This brings out some wonderful stories from the heart of their community and also helps build up the confidence of the girls," noted the NGO's founder Baitali Ganguly.

The girls present at the interactive session said they felt a sense of pride to be part of the initiative and have come a long way from writing news in leaflets to actually publishing a community newspaper.

"I am a girl myself. So I can relate to the problems that the girls in our locality face everyday. Most of these incidents go unreported in the mainstream media but we try to highlight these incidents and attract the local administration's attention to resolve the problems," said Rabeya Khatoon from West Bengal's Murshidabad district.

--IANS

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