Initiatives for Married Adolescent Girls’ Empowerment (IMAGE) is a unique intervention focusing on the SRHR and other developmental aspects of early married girls (EMGs) like Health & Nutrition, Education, Against Gender-Based Violence (GBV) and Social Protection. IMAGE is the first known intervention that focuses on social issues of the EMGs who were in the age group of 13 to 16 years at the start of the project. Their issues – physical and mental trauma experienced by child wives and mothers, never received the deserved attention due to preoccupation of efforts on prevention of child marriages by government.
The project is implemented by a consortium constituted by 6 civil society organisations in 5 districts of Karnataka, with the support of Terre des Hommes, Netherlands (TdH-NL). It covers identified 3077 girls who were married before the age of 18 years with the overall objective of empowering EMGs towards Social and Economical Independence by Collectively Involving Government, CSOs’ and Community to be responsible in addressing the needs towards sustainability. The specific project objectives are;
- To facilitate available health and social security services to early married girls and prevent gender-based violence & adolescent pregnancy.
- To facilitate increased access to secondary education and Job-oriented Vocational training among the Early Married Girls.
The strategy of the project consists of three aspects – Prevention, Provision and Promotion and the major actors of the project are Early Married Girls, Families and Communities, Government and Civil Society Organisations. The consortium is led and implemented at Bidar by Vidyanikethan and other implementing partners are SEVAK – Belgaum, REACH – Bagalkot, PMSR – Chamrajanagara and ARPANAM/TdH NL – Chikkaballapura. The Funding and technical support provided by TdH-NL and Child Right Trust acts as a pillar for the partners in enhancing their capacity on child rights and state-level advocacy and lobbying with the stakeholders and Government departments. The project is currently implemented in 13 blocks covering 109 panchayats of 5 districts in the state of Karnataka.
The initial findings of the project put forth that out of the identified 3077 EMGs, 24 are separated, 22 are widowed and 5 are living alone. These figures point out that Marriage at adolescent age not just results in burden and depression, but the changes in marital status adds to the pain and suffering.
The project creates lasting behaviour changes of EMGs, their spouses and their families. The general public and media are enabled to understand the rights of adolescent EMGs and the subsequent need to protect these girls from harmful circumstances.