In Latur, 14-year-old scripts an inspiring tale; teaches others to learn new skill

Gita (left) showing her work to social worker Asha Gadkar who lent a mobile phone to the teenager

While National Girl Child Day is celebrated in India every year on January 24, to spread awareness among people about inequalities girls face in the Indian Society, we get an inspirational story of a 14-year-old Gita Karade, from Dongargaon village in Jalkot taluka, 100 kilometres from Latur district, who studies in class nine in the villages Secondary Ashram school, developed a skill on a borrowed mobile phone and is now empowering other girls in her village through it and has managed to make few hundred rupees of her own, to continue with her studies as her parents (daily farm labourers) are struggling to have a living with a meagre daily wage of Rs 150 per day.

Gita's parents Yamunabai and Rajkumar outside their home in Latur district

Gita's family consists of five members including parents - father Rajkumar (45), mother Yamunabhai (36), an older sister Krisha (16) studying in class eleven and younger brother Karan (12), a class six student and Gita herself.

"Her parents earn their living by working as daily wage farm labourers in the village itself. And with three children to support, they are always short on cash. Their only means of survival is when they have a steady flow of work, which in turn gives them some cash to buy food. With no work, there is no food. The Karade family live in utter poverty, in a small house, which has no electricity, nor any furniture's," said Asha Gadkar (35), a local community social worker, from neighbouring village, who visit Dongargaon village, four times in a week, to giving counselling to adolescent girls from the village, of which Gita is a member.

"The Corona pandemic outbreak and extended lockdown left the family in the lurch as they (parents) weren't able to find any work and added to that was the famine that struck the district. Our NGO Kalapandhari, which is partnered with CRY provided them with regular ration during the last few months and they even had to borrow money from their neighbours in the village, to meet their ends," said Jaywant Jangapalle (30), who handle Management Information System (MIS) for the NGO.

Furthermore, looking at her own parents without work, Gita thought that it may be a good idea for her to learn something online and look for work that can also enable her to help her parents.

Keeping this in mind, Gita told the community organizer one day, "Tai, everything is closed now, schools are not open, so I only have time. If I get a mobile temporarily, I will learn something through YouTube that will make me self-sufficient in the future," recalled Asha.

Asha added, "She (Gita) is a member of the adolescent girl's group that we run in her village, where we counsel young girls the importance of education and attending schools regularly, as they come from poor families, with no regular source of income. Also, we help these young girls to bring out their hidden talents, by encouraging them to come up with ideas for skill development, so that they can become self-reliant, with possible guidance and support."

"Gita is a multi-talented child with good grasping and creative quality. She would watch the mobile videos for hours and within a few days, was confident of making similar artwork, but the challenge was she had no money to buy materials required for the decorative art pieces," recalled Jaywant.

He added, "Gita, asked her mother to lend her Rs 200 for purchasing the decorative materials, and the reply from her mother, shattered her from within - I have no money, and we owe money to our lenders"

As lockdown began to lift, work too began trickling in for her parents and Gita found herself opting to work with her parents on a nearby field to lend a hand to them.

She worked on a cotton field picking cotton for three days and was finally able to afford to buy some materials like threads, wool, decorative pearls etc to create her products from the Rs 200 that she earned.

Gita ended up making four new items from the material that she bought - a mobile bag, a doormat, a scarf and a veil.

Interestingly when Asha along with a few women from the village's Self Help Group was paying a visit to Gita's home she happened to see the items she had created and liked it. The women accompanying her also loved her work and ended up purchasing them. They themselves decided on pricing them and soon Gita sold all the items that were priced by these women from Rs 150 onwards to Rs 300.

Encouraged by this Gita has been creating many such pieces and not only selling them but also has been volunteering to teach the rest of the girls from the adolescent girl's groups.

When asked Asha, how she managed her footing mobile bills, as it was used to watch videos for hours, she said, "I have an unlimited prepaid plan of 196 rupees, which helps me to get 2GB of data free. My otherwise use of mobile data is limited, now with Gita also using the phone, the data is hardly 1.5GB, which still is affordable. Had it been a postpaid plan, it would not have been feasible"

"Majhi gharache arthik paristhiti khup kamakuvat ahe" (My family's financial condition is very weak). We stay in a small house with no electricity. I like to go to school and make decorative items, watching videos on my mobile phone" said Gita, speaking to MiDDAY from Latur.

When asked how much she earned from selling her decorative pieces, Gita said, "I earned a few hundred rupees, and even after buying a few more decorative materials, I could save Rs 100. I want to buy a mobile phone (Android phone cost Rs 9000) and I know I have to earn Rs 8,900 more, which will take a few more years. But I will surely buy one phone so that I can continue watching videos and learning."

But when informed that she doesn't have electricity at home, to charge the mobile phone, she quickly replied, "My grandmother's house has electricity. She stays close to our village, I will go to her to charge her phone."

"If it hadn't been for the lockdown, I wouldn't have known I had the talent to create something like this. I aim to become a teacher, but want to continue developing my skills watching mobile video," said Gita

Her parents say, "We are very proud of our daughter. We never thought that she would earn money using her own merits. We always thought that she would earn a living by working like us. But now that our worries are gone, our daughter is capable of standing on her own two feet," said the mother Yamunabhai.

"We are very happy that at such a young age she is helping us by sitting at home without going to work in anyone's field," said an emotional father.

At present Gita is going to school regularly as well as studying. Gita says she wants to pursue higher education in the future and try for a government job as a teacher, and if she doesn't get a job, she wants to pursue the same business and use the money to pursue business management.