Some women are lost in fire. Some women are built from it. -Michelle K Some.

Living in a joint family Shobha from Shivpur village, Koppal district was in standard 10th when she joined as a peer in the Sphoorthi group. A keen learner and active member, she is an ambitious girl who wants to work after completing her studies and support her parents, along with taking care of her sister’s education. After 10th she decided to take up Humanities and was continuing in First PUC when her uncle adamantly tried to force marriage on her. As they had a joint family, her parents couldn’t say a word and her marriage was fixed.

Undeterred by the growing pressure on her, she got an opportunity to interact with the Koppal D.C., Mr P. Sunil Kumar, wherein she raised the issue of how her uncle is forcibly trying to get her married. The D.C. constituted a special committee to stop the child marriage. The committee made a home visit. The way the committee approached the entire issue and tried to counsel angered her uncle even more, and she was thrashed for raising her voice against the marriage.

Her marriage, despite all her efforts to be stopped, was fixed to a boy who was wealthy but of a bad demeanour- in the month of March 2019. The boy’s family lured Shobha’s uncle for wealth. Yet, Shobha was not ready to give up the fight. She informed the Sphoorthi girls, the community organizer, and other project staff to call ChildLine and finally one day before her marriage, she was rescued by the ChildLine team. She was kept at Bal Mandir and from there she appeared for her exams and passed in all the subjects. At her home, except her parents nobody supported her; everybody looked down upon her as if she has committed some crime- including many others in the village. Nonetheless, the Spoorthi girls stood strongly by her side and told her what she did was right.

Shobha is now in Second PUC and is also a cluster level leader who actively participated in the cluster level leaders’ training. She shares her story with all the girls and gives them courage in the face of difficulty. She is truly an inspiration and a living example of the quote: “fortune favours the bold”.