There’s nothing like a heart-to-heart with your big sister for clearing up questions on awkward subjects.
So, when sexual abuse of tribal girls reared its ugly head in Malkangiri district around 2019, a group of tribal women volunteered to be elder sisters, or ‘Bada Didi,’ for adolescents.
Odisha’s Tribal Empowerment and Awareness Mission (TEAM) has some 67 volunteers from the Koya, Bonda, Paraja, Bhumia, Didayi and Durua tribes. All the women are between 20 and 30 years of age.
They hope to stop gullible tribals from becoming victims of sexual exploitation with their awareness campaign on ‘good touch, bad touch.’
TEAM began with 27 Bada Didis, recalls its secretary Rama Krushna. Training workshops were organised for them, with experts from Bhubaneswar and Nagpur explaining the adverse impact of child marriage, benefits of hygienic sanitary napkins, and, most importantly, the difference between good and bad touch.
Soon, the Bada Didi began to visit the site of most crimes — residential schools for tribals — to pass on the message. They would divide the girls into two groups based on the senior and junior classes. The Bada Didi would mainly dwell on good touch and bad touch with younger students, while counselling the older girls on a gamut of social and personal issues.
“We counsel the reticent younger children on touch as they are more vulnerable to sexual exploitation. When schools shut down for the pandemic, we moved out to villages to counsel the girls, heeding all Covid-19 guidelines,” explains volunteer Deepa.
As the volunteers belong to different tribes, they interact easily in local dialects with all the students. But it still takes three to four sittings for the youngsters to open up.
Volunteer Radhika Majhi says, “Our efforts are yielding results, as the girls have started to be vocal against sexual approaches. But child marriage, so strongly ingrained in tribal societies, will take a long time to completely eliminate.”
TEAM president Jayanti Buruda is happy about both the proactive volunteering and the response to their work. “This movement has gathered momentum… we now have more than double the number of Bada Didi taking part in our crusade,” she says with pride.
