Ika Chaalu 

Ika Chaalu; enough is enough 

 

Ika Chaalu is used as a shorthand term to refer to a collaborative partnership on the theme of gender equality and education between the MV Foundation and Stichting Charity Fund Rijsholt. MVF's current intervention in SCFR project is in 110-gram panchayats covering all children ( about 14000 children)  in the 11-18 years age group in the 5 mandals of Vikarabad, Shankarpalli, Atmakur, Nuthankal and Maddirala. The focus is on adolescent girls.

The project takes a rights-based, inclusionary and universalist approach; and its main objective is to ensure that all adolescent girls in the project area complete their education up to class 12. This is achieved through a multi-layered movement in which all social groups, classes, castes and communities, as are parents, teachers, government officials, local institutions, boys and above all the girls themselves, are engaged in defining, demanding and delivering girls’ right to education. The end result of this process is a turning around of deep-seated value systems and long held gender and education norms which routinely thwart girls in their ambitions to complete secondary education, delay marriage and childbearing and enjoy physical security and protection from abuse and violence.