: Entrepreneur Trains 120 Girls In Football To Stop Early Marriage, Child Trafficking #IndiaNEWS #Jharkhand Despite the fact that Jharkhand is one of the states where 47-51 per cent girls are married

Entrepreneur Trains 120 Girls In Football To Stop Early Marriage, Child Trafficking #IndiaNEWS #Jharkhand
Despite the fact that Jharkhand is one of the states where 47-51 per cent girls are married below the age of 18, a ray of hope comes from Bahoranpur village, where many are attempting to break this vicious cycle.
Their weapon of choice? A football.
Roshni Pradhan and her organisation, Unbound Futures Foundation, are helping 120 girls from under-resourced backgrounds come together and kick gender bias to the curb.
She explains that in villages like Bahoranpur and other faraway hamlets, schools don’t go beyond class 5. “These villages mainly have government primary schools, so to pursue education, one has to travel to cities like Ranchi or Dhanbad,�? she tells The Better India. “It is a terrible situation that results in girls dropping out of school. �?
Roshni with children in a classroom.
The 52-year-old adds, “Coming from families that are often not too well off makes these girls vulnerable to early marriage and human trafficking. �? This is the phenomenon that the organisation is aiming to reduce.
Breaking shackles
“In Jharkhand, football is popular among youngsters. But girls in the villages did not play any games. I wanted to encourage them to play the sport. Our interactions helped me learn about how much discrimination they were facing. I thought football would provide a new opportunity,�? she says.
“We have identified girls from 12 villages of Hazaribagh district who are undergoing training. A tournament has been scheduled on March 8 for the occasion of International Women’s Day. This is also for fundraising, which will enable the construction of the school,�? she says.
As the NGO sows the seeds of change, its roots can be traced back to hundreds of kilometres away in Darjeeling.
“I grew up in Bijanbari village, Darjeeling, where we often saw children of tea estate workers whiling their time away at the riverside, or helping their parents pluck tea leaves as they grew older,�? Roshni says. “One of the reasons they wouldn’t stay in school is also the poor infrastructure of these institutions, or that teachers were absent on most days. �?
She decided to teach children from such backgrounds — first by going to their homes, and then, as response increased, visiting schools.
Here, she learned a lesson. “The overall development of a child is equally important. Since football is a popular game in the Northeast, I called in a coach to help the children learn and improve their skills,�? she says.
With this, around 500 students received training in the sport, and Roshni established Unbound Futures in 2018 to give her cause a formal shape. “Initially, I paid for the training with my savings and earnings from the business I was running.