Lucknow: “Equality is an important aspect of democracy. Being democratic means that we believe and treat everyone equally. It is important to educate our boys that girls are equal and they have to work together to strengthen democracy and I am glad that Study Hall Educational Foundation is working towards educating everyone for equality and social justice,” said Asim Arun, Minister of State, Social Welfare at the India’s Daughters Campaign award ceremony. 

Study Hall Educational Foundation (SHEF) organized the annual India’s Daughters Campaign (IDC) award ceremony on Tuesday. As a part of the campaign, discussions on patriarchy were organized in 1700 schools and 2 lakh children from all districts of Uttar Pradesh participated in the campaign. Drama competition, film making, poster making, essay and poem writing competitions were conducted and an amount of 1 lakh 54 thousand was distributed among the winners as scholarship. Mr P K Tripathi, Joint Director of Samj Kalyan was also present. Members from organisations like – UNICEF, Room To Read, AIDWA, AALI, Jijiwisha Society, Robin Hood Army, DIET and Manavsrijan were also present.

Dr Urvashi Sahni, founder and CEO of SHEF said, “Congratulations to the winners as well as all the children who participated in our campaign. Our campaign urges men and boys to change. When we talk about equality, it is imperative to include boys and men in the conversation. They must learn that patriarchy is cruel, unfair, unjust to women and girls and nothing can change if we don’t teach our boys and men to annihilate patriarchal structures and establish an egalitarian one instead.”

For the past two years, boys have become the focus of the IDC. The theme of this year’s campaign was – It’s time for men and boys to change, which focused on educating boys and men to fight patriarchy and become advocates and champions of gender justice. In  the last 12 years, SHEF through IDC has successfully mobilized over 11 lakh community members and raised awareness regarding girl’s rights and gender based violence.

Photo courtesy: DSH Team