Girl Up TIET-“By girls, for girls, girl-lead and girl-driven”

 

                                                                                                                   -Shreya Sandhu

                                                                                                       (Girl Up Founder TIET campus)                                  

Interviewed by Aryan Lamba                                                 

Girl up is, “By girls, for girls, girl-lead and girl-driven”.

Ever felt the thought to ask yourself that what are these organizations, why do they exist and what is it that they do. Girl Up is a campaign of the united nations Foundation, which gives girls the opportunity to channel their energy and compassion to raise awareness. Through education, fundraising and all the other activities members develop the leadership skills necessary to make a positive impact in the lives of girls everywhere. Girl Up is working towards a world where girls have equal values, access, and opportunities to reach their fullest potential. Girl Up has 3,300 clubs in more than 120 countries. Girl Up provides a platform and guides, girls, along their journey from leaders to changemakers. When girls take part in Girl Up programs, they experience higher self-confidence, compassion, empathy, social, collaboration and civic participation.

Theta Nu Xi, “Girls are powerful when girls stand up for girls in need, they empower each other and transform our world”.

One such beautiful journey is shared by Shreya Sandhu (Founder of Girl Up TIET campus). Through this article she shares her experience of the whole campaign which includes all the problems faced by her and her team and the way they tackled all of them. We all know that Feminism is a need of the hour in India but, how often do we see our friends or even our family talking about it. The whole concept of equality is based on having equal rights and representation which is the basics of democracy and we as Indians feel proud in claiming that we are living in a democracy but, are we? When we allow or give someone permission to do any work, we act as a superior individual and that is not equality. Girl Up TIET was founded in June 2020 and it consisted of 8 members during the initial phase. Shreya said that “At the starting of the campaign I felt that we are a community of like-minded individuals that came together to become that change in the society to educate ourselves as well as the underprivileged towards numerous issues in the society”. She further said that “We faced a lot of problems like constant mocking, calling us pseudo-feminists and traumatizing us”. Today, Girl Up TIET is a team of 75 members and has successfully conducted a lot of events like:

1)    Made in Heaven

2)    Sex Education

3)    Hack 4 she

 

The truth is that we are living in a society influenced by social media and where we act like everything is normal and we just accept the already existing norms and regulations. We hold back ourselves and live on the terms of society and hence no one is willing to talk about such issues. We blame society but in the end, we are the society.