Last week, I found myself in Rural India. Not a place where I would normally find myself, but when you work for a non-profit stranger things happen. Calling the place a village may be a bit of an exaggeration - it was a hamlet of 17 homes, most of them little more than rude huts. And the entire population of the village could be captured in one frame -
It was a village forgotten by progress. Where people were no better off than they must have been a century ago. Where livestock and farming were the the only livelihood options; both barely enough to keep people out of poverty.
But what you noticed most about the village was the fact that women outnumbered men almost two to one. It was not that every family in the village produced more girls than boys, it was just that the men had all migrated to the nearby towns and cities in search of work, leaving the women behind.
And a highly articulate bunch of women they were.
There was the 17-year-old girl who had been forced to drop out of school in Grade 8, because she needed to take care of her sick mother. The girl had a better grasp of the problems facing her village than any other person of her age, and she was willing to try out new ideas that might bring increased prosperity.
"What is your deepest desire?" I asked her.
Pat came the answer - "I want to continue my studies, and do something that improves the quality of life in the village."
She clearly knew where her priorities were.
There was the grandmother of indeterminate age who had got her friends together to form an Emergency Fund. All the women contributed Rs. 100 ($ 2.50) a month to the Fund, which they would dig into in case of medical emergency, to fund small community driven projects, and to meet various contingency expenses. The lady didn't need much prodding to stand up and explain why the women had decided to create the Fund. "There is no way we can predict when we will need money," she said. "And when we need money, nobody has any to spare. This way, we each put away a little bit when we can, and we can all benefit." Was she encouraged by stories of the Microfinance Revolution? She'd never even heard of it, and couldn't be too bothered by it either. Her solution was to take care of a specific problem - it if corresponded to a type, she was not particularly bothered about it.
Would she consider entering local politics?
Why should she? What would politics give her that she did not already have?
The women brought home the fact of the Girl Effect better than many slickly produced videos. Enable women, and you can change the world. And if it takes a video to get that message across, I am more than happy to give it screen space -
