The Children of India Foundation (CIF) recently concluded a district-level Outcome Harvesting Workshop as part of the completion of our second year of initiatives under Project Children Good. The three-day Outcome Harvesting Festival was held from May 8th to 10th, 2024, at the Don Bosco Provincial House in Bangalore to capture and evaluate the outcomes...

Good news from our Children GOOD project! Shilpi was a bubbly young girl who enjoyed drawing, dancing, and reading. She aspires to be a teacher and educate the children in her community. Her dreams were quickly shattered when reality hit her. She was forced to work as a sex worker after puberty by casually stating...

One of the oldest traditions that India has seen is the Devadasi system. It involves a ritual in which young girls, usually before puberty, are married off or dedicated to deities. It has been infamous for the sexual exploitation and discrimination against the girls and women.  Some may think that it’s an issue of the...

15-year-old Nandini would stand at the bus stop in her blue checkered tunic and red tie eagerly waiting to hop on the bus, see her friends and recite poems with them on the way. Every day she looked forward to sitting at the window seat on the bus from where she would see the birds-...

In December, at Bangalore’s Vidhana Sabha, together with the State Ministry of Women & Child Development and Ministry of Social Welfare, we held a consultation with devadasi women, children of devadasi representatives from non-governmental organizations, the Child Rights Commission and the Women Development Corporation to discuss issues pertaining to the Devadasis. The Devadasi system is...

17-year-old Bhargavi* is known for her smile which lights up a room.  Bhargavi is the youngest child of her mother, a former Devadasi woman, who later began working day in and out as a porter to raise her 4 children- Bhargavi, her elder brother and her two elder sisters who are now married.  The First...

Devadasi System: An Ancient Practice  Children of Devadasi undergo discrimination, drop out of school early, face violence and abuse. Even the children who do not take the path of sex work still face society’s stigma of being a ‘prostitute’s child’ which holds them back from maximizing their potential. In many cases, it is this ostracizing...

There is a misconception among the masses that the Devadasi system only exists in history books today whereas the truth is there are around 80,000 Devadasis* living in the North Karntaka region of India.  The adolescent girls coming from these Devadasi comminutes face a lot of discrimination preventing them from getting access to education, nutrition...

Hailing from socio-economically deprived Devadasi communities, children from villages of North Karnataka go through complex challenges. They are denied basic respect and rights, and are discriminated against; let alone the economic crisis that comes with it.  To bring them out of these stressful situations and empower them mentally and emotionally, our project Children GOOD conducts...

In the small village of Yalgur, Bijapur district at the banks of the Krishna river lives 15-year-old Lekha (name changed). With a little black bindi on her forehead, hair pleated in a braid and a bag full of books, she walks around her lush-green village carrying a beaming smile. One can easily ignore the fact...