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Dusk was settling over a suburban neighborhood in southern India, but Stella Leethiyal wasn`t ready to go home. The 47-year-old teacher was busy visiting shanties to meet women and educate them about good parenting €” the key to a child`s successful development.

Aside from teaching women about parenting, Stella also focuses on educating them about their individual rights and convincing their male partners to understand and respect the value of the women in their households. Stella, who works as a teacher at a ChildFund-supported early childhood development (ECD) center in Chennai, India, does this out of a desire to see her fellow women become aware and empowered.

“Personally, I have seen many setbacks faced by women in my locality since my childhood,” Stella says. “I have always dreamt of a society where women and men are treated equally in all aspects of life. My association with ChildFund India has given my dream a direction, and I have tried my best to achieve this goal.”

Currently, Stella works with children whose families often migrate to find work, a population that faces serious obstacles to a full education.

Before becoming an ECD teacher in 1997, Stella was a community mobilizer for ChildFund; her prime focus was educating and empowering women. Her efforts helped convince nomadic families to send their children to school for the first time.

Stella is very happy about her work, but she is dissatisfied with the general condition of women across the country. “People say India is now a powerful country,” she says, “But how can you be powerful when one section of your population is so weak?”

According to latest U.N. Human Development report, India is ranked 129 out of 146 countries on the Gender Inequality Index. However, many people in India like Stella are working to improve the state of women and girls through education, health care, sanitation and political participation. The government also runs several programs aimed at empowering women.

In the past year, ChildFund India has reached out to more than 142,000 women and engaged them in various issues ranging from their health and sanitation to economic empowerment.

To assist women who wish to earn income, ChildFund India promotes women`s Self-Help Groups (SHGs) that manage microloans at a village level, which helps women become more self-sufficient. India has more than 5,600 such groups across the country, with 18,000 members.

Stella is just one of hundreds of committed individuals in India who are giving hope to women across the country. They aspire to build a new India where women are respected and allowed to lead.

It’s common to hear older Bolivians describing adolescents and children as being in their “donkey’s age” because they can be bull-headed. But this perception of youth is now changing in the city of Tarija, southern Bolivia, where children and youth have been given the opportunity to put forward their own solutions for community problems like alcoholism, garbage and poor-quality playgrounds.

“We might be small, but we can do big things” is the slogan of one of the youth clubs.

This dream started with small steps. With support from ChildFund Bolivia, young people created clubs in their local area by choosing their own names, designing logos and writing club constitutions with rules about honesty, punctuality, teamwork and more.

One of the main problems the youth clubs identified was pollution in their neighbourhoods, as well as a lack of good recreational spaces. The few playgrounds that did exist were in poor condition. They also recognised that a lack of street lighting and persistent alcoholism made their neighbourhoods more dangerous. These concerns echoed what ChildFund Bolivia staff heard during our area strategy discussions with the Tarija communities.

After forming a club, the children in Guadalquivir planted 12 trees – which they bought themselves – during a clean-up campaign. In Nueva Esperanza, the club members started a campaign to prevent alcoholism and also purchased new lights for the community’s soccer field. A youth leader, studying architecture, designed a new playground and coordinated the project in Moto Mendez.

One of Tarija’s rural partners had problems with the speed of traffic near a school so the children consulted the mayor. As a result, speed bumps were put in place. In the same area, the youth raised awareness among adults to use the garbage collection services that passed through the community once a week, instead of tossing trash out on the streets or burning it.

Money is often short, so the club members have made alliances with local authorities and parents’ groups. Municipal governments have helped the children’s groups buy trees to plant in their neighbourhoods.

These are just a few examples of how children and youth can speak up, reach out and create change – because as they tell us: “There are more ideas and, of course, a lot of energy!”

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