: 1st Girl To Go To College From Village, 25-YO Beats Odds To Help Every Girl Dream #IndiaNEWS #Activism This article has been published in partnership with Breakthrough India. The 16 Days of Activism

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1st Girl To Go To College From Village, 25-YO Beats Odds To Help Every Girl Dream #IndiaNEWS #Activism
This article has been published in partnership with Breakthrough India.

The 16 Days of Activism against Gender-based Violence is an annual international campaign held from 25 November till 10 December, organised by UN Women and kicked off by the Women’s Global Leadership Institute in 1991. To mark these 16 days, The Better India and Breakthrough India bring you stories of young women taking charge as catalysts of positive change in their towns, cities, villages and communities.
In Garhi Khajur village of Karnal, Haryana, 25-year-old Jyothi is leading a movement to give girls a chance for a better future. Otherwise, life here is an endless struggle against a system that turns a blind eye to the very existence of women.
In the district that showed a downward trend in the gender ratio this year, girls are married off early, and education remains a far-fetched dream for most.
“When I started going to school, there were a lot of girls studying till Class 10. But almost all of them dropped out right after,� Jyothi recalls in conversation with The Better India.
Jyothi was one of the first girls in her village to complete her education and the only girl from the area to go to college. Despite strong support from her parents, achieving this dream was no easy feat. The school in her village only went up till Class 5, so she would travel on foot to the closest one, located around 3-4 kilometres away, every day so she could continue studying.
“Child marriage is rampant in my village, and education is not a priority,� she explains. “The moment a girl turns around 15 or 16 years old, she is sent for manual labour on the fields, and not allowed to step out of her home in the evening. When she returns home, her husband beats her up, mostly over money, and she has no life beyond that. �
But as a team change leader with Breakthrough, Jyothi is changing the landscape of her village, one step at a time.
Breakthrough works to create a cultural shift and make discrimination and violence against girls and women unacceptable. It was founded by activist Mallika Dutt in 2000. The organisation began its journey with the release of Mann ke Manjeere: An Album of Women’s Dream, which talked about women’s rights through an album and a music video, as an experiment in using pop culture and media for social justice. Based out of the US and India, it aims to raise awareness about and inspire action against gender-based violence through its initiatives and programmes.
Over the years, Breakthrough has been able to bring about lasting positive changes in their intervention areas — increasing the probability of girls being enrolled in schools, the age of marriage in Uttar Pradesh, encouraging the reporting of cases of violence, and transforming gender-regressive views of adolescents, and more.

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