“I was married at the age of 15 after my father passed away”, said an adolescent Renuka from a district in North Karnataka. “I grew up with a lot of dreams in my heart, but after marriage I was not sure if I could fulfil them”, she added. Every year, 1.5 million girls under the...

“This is Charki Bakri and that is Goli Bakri“, says Sunita Devi as she speaks about her goats. “I love them very much”, she adds. Sunita Devi lives in the Mica belt of Jharkhand, where low wages from extreme dependence on Mica collection places families in abject poverty. The result of this is that children...

One of the most tragic outcomes of the pandemic was the loss of livelihood, leaving poor families in a worse situation. Seventeen-year-old Karunya* from the Devadasi community rose against the odds to provide for her family in these trying circumstances. Karunya hails from a community where girls and young women face abuse, discrimination and exploitation....

“I have always been interested in working with fabrics”, said seventeen-year-old Kamala*. Married at the age of 13, Kamala thought she wouldn’t be able to fulfill her dreams.   Things took a turn for the better when she was introduced to the IMAGE  project.      “I expressed to the team that I wanted to...

Devamma from South Karnataka is an extremely young mother at the age of fourteen.  Devamma has been in a constant state of struggles since childhood as her father left her mother because she gave birth to three girls. This caused her mother to take her own life followed by which Devamma had to shift into...

On March 8, IMAGE celebrated International Women’s Day by conducting a session with 135 early married girls, Civil Society Organisations and other stakeholders. Held in the districts of Belgaum and Bidar, the session revolved around the theme of ‘Women in Leadership’ as given by the United Nations to create a Gender-Equal world.  Through different activities...

As part of our Mica project, we conducted various training programmes to develop and strengthen our project team, inclusive of partner NGOs,  and other stakeholders. These training programmes were conducted by staff members and external experts towards the personal development of the team.  Effective delivery of the project:  A 3  day refresher training for 14 staff...