By ALESHA CAPONE
A YOUNG Taylors Lakes resident is determined to help improve the lives of young Indian girls.
Ravneet Mundi, 21, said she spent a semester at an Indian college in her second year at La Trobe University, where she became aware of social issues facing the nation’s females.
This year, Ms Mundi received a social leadership fellowship from Teach for India, which aims to eradicate inequity through education.
Ms Mundi underwent a month of training before she began teaching a class of 30 girls from the Indian slums.
“We were prepared mentally for all the issues we could face in the slums – for example, child abuse,” Ms Mundi said.
“A lot of girls are neglected, not wanted or malnourished because of the economic situation they are in.
“I had girls passing out in my class because they hadn’t eaten.”
Ms Mundi said many parents only sent their daughters to the school for the free government-provided meal.
While in India, she started personality development workshops so the girls could feel a sense of self-worth and realise education could propel them out of the slums.
Ms Mundi said she was devastated when one of her seven-year-old pupils developed a brain tumour, requiring expensive medical treatment.
Tragically, another one of her young students was raped in a case which is now before the Indian courts.
Ms Mundi said she visited the girl’s family after the incident, and saw the girl lying screaming on a bed with bruises on her body.
The girl lives with her mother and five siblings in a one room house which Ms Mundi described as the size of a bathroom.
“I was in shock, I couldn’t believe she lived in these conditions,” Ms Mundi said.
Due to Indian hospitals being understaffed, she personally took the girl’s blood to an STD clinic for testing.
Ms Mundi, who visited her parents last week before flying back to India, has started an online campaign to raise money for both of her students and their families.
See http://www.gofundme.com/helpmygirls to make a donation.
