A cloud of dust follows the auto rickshaw as I leave Sheopur, a district in northern Madhya Pradesh. Though a six-hour bus ride through the jungle lies ahead, my heart and head are filled with the impressions of my last 10 days spent at the Kasturba Gandhi Ashram School for Girls.

By Kathrin Winkler / Women's Feature Service

Along the roadside, five figures are walking silently in measured steps, straining under the heavy loads of firewood. One is a young girl, she can't be much older than 12 or 13. Without schooling, such hard labour is the only choice for young tribal village girls.

It was the Ekta Parishad (People's Forum) that brought me to India from my home in Canada. This Bhopal-based popular organisation is involved in training and capacity-building for young people in rural areas. It seeks to bring about change through Gandhian methods.

Marginalised
I attended a presentation by Ekta Parishad’s leader Rajagopal P.V. in Canada in 2007. Hearing him talk about mobilising 25,000 participants for justice and land rights planted the seeds of my involvement.

Ekta Parishad has a long history of village work in western Madhya Pradesh and I was curious to see how the focus on rights over land, water and forests of the disadvantaged communities links to the education of the adivasi girl child. Adivasi (tribal) identity refers to those who "define themselves by a kinship to an ancient lineage before they identify with a nation" These diverse communities are outside of the caste system and marginalised in modern Indian society.

Confidence
When Rajagopal suggested I visit a tribal residential school, I felt an inner alarm. The Canadian government imposed a residential school system for the Inuit and other aboriginal communities across Canada from the 1920s to the 1970s. Years later, a Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Canada uncovered the victims' experiences of abuse and neglect. Loss of culture, loss of language and loss of identity is a violation and a loss for all sides. I wondered how India honours diversity and struggles against a caste system that is entrenched socially and economically.

When I arrived at the school I felt reassured. It is housed in a large compound with trees, and an uneven space in the centre in which the open-air classrooms are situated. The school is home to 100 girls from villages in the district of Morena.

Ekta Parishad's reputation for supporting the tribals on land issues has built a firm foundation of confidence among the parents. They are willing to send their daughters to the school because they know they are going to be cared for ‘as if they were in a family’, and that their culture will be honoured.

In the evenings, village musicians played while the girls danced and sang – the older ones taught the youngsters the intricate hand movement of a shawl dance.

Liberation
All the girls at the Kasturba Gandhi Ashram School are dropouts from village schools that boast imaginary attendance, often so that government food allotments will find their way to undeserving pockets.

The pupils face challenges that include child marriage (several are married off by 14) and poverty – the girls earn meagre wages desperately needed by their families.

The literacy rate in Madhya Pradesh as a whole is 62 percent, but it's lower in Sheopur district – only 47 per cent. The rate drops to 22 per cent among women, and a mere nine per cent among tribals in the district.

Ekta Parishad considers literacy a tool to liberation, as people who live in a purely oral society are vulnerable to exploitation.

Inspiring
Our week together was spent in exchange and developing relationships through art lessons and teacher workshops to encourage co-operative learning (rather than learning by rote) and English language games.

Interviews with the students were inspiring. Sukama, 13, has been at the school for three years. Her teachers are proud of her accomplishments and she is determined to become a doctor so that she can serve people in remote villages. When asked what the greatest barriers were in her schooling, she replied,

"I could not write or read Hindi and I had never left my village. I am happy to be here. At home I would have to graze goats, here I can learn to read and write. The teachers are good."

Doctors and teachers  
Vinoda, 14, worries about her widowed mother, the sole supporter of six children. She wants to be a teacher and compliments her teachers at the ashram hoping that her education will help her family. When I asked her what she is proud of as a Sahariya, she smiled shyly. "We are a people that knows how to live with little and be satisfied."

Access to education for the tribal Sahariyas of Sheopur remains a challenge. But Ekta activists hope that one day there will be Sahariya graduate doctors and teachers. In time, Vinoda and Sukama could well be among them.

Kathrin Winkler is a retired teacher from Canada.