×
ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT

Migrants fight AIDS through spread of word

Knowledge is key
Last Updated 07 July 2013, 19:38 IST

Maya Gurung came to Delhi in 2003 soon after she got married to a compatriot Nepali, working in the capital.

They both were 22 years old then. She did not know the language, nor did she have any idea of life in a metro.

She was raised in a village in the Terai plains of her land-locked country.

Having spent 10 summers in Delhi, Maya is no longer a shy woman she once used to be. She now speaks Hindi fluently; more importantly, she educates fellow Nepalis through awareness classes on social issues, mainly healthcare — on prevention of HIV — which has a high prevalence among the migrant population of the subcontinent.

Maya is one among 700-plus peer educators of South Asia’s only project, EMPHASIS, that strives to reduce HIV/AIDS vulnerability among cross-border migrants to India from Nepal, besides Bangladesh.

Kuldip Singh, another project coordinator with EMPHASIS, said “The prime objective of the learning site is to test models and document the on-going process, achievements and challenges. EMPHASIS has reached out many people at source, transit and destination sites.”

“I thought I should pass on to my brothers and sisters my learning experience of the dangers of acquiring certain diseases and the ways to avoid them,” said the woman, who joined the Enhancing Mobile Populations’ Access to HIV and AIDS Services, Information and Support (EMPHASIS) team last year.

According to Mamta Behera, partnership coordinator of the project, “When it comes to anti-HIV activities, we face stiff resistance even from house-owners who rent out accommodation to Nepalis.”

Jaspal Yadav, who owns the building that has rented out rooms to 15-odd Nepali families including Maya’s, said his earlier misgivings about EMPHASIS were put to rest, courtesy the positive societal change he has seen in the community during course of the project.

At Rajiv Gandhi Camp, another Nepali population hamlet in Naraina, Ganesh Kumar Vaswane said the community organises street plays that gives insight into a deadly problem like AIDS.

“Our members ensure that such activities form part of our traditional festivals,” added the middle-aged man who came to Delhi from his native Surkhet district in the late 1970s as a teenager in search of a job.

Bohidar said the project initially focused on HIV intervention, but soon realised the need for a comprehensive programmatic approach to migration. “Today, we touch upon a wide range of developmental issues such as access to education for migrants’ children, safe remittances, domestic violence and harassment at workplace, besides equal wages for labour migrants, rescue and repatriation,” he added.

An international humanitarian organisation, CARE, has launched a pioneering five-year project, EMPHASIS, in September 2009.

Estimates suggest that India has no less than 25 lakh Nepalese migrants.

“Similarly, migration from Bangladesh is huge. There are no reliable estimates, but a World Bank report recognises the Bangladesh-India corridors as one of the world’s most voluminous,” said Nabesh Bohidar, team leader (India) EMPHASIS.

The Nepali population in India tends to live in clusters. One such is a southwest Delhi pocket called Kapashera, where Maya lives.

Behera said EMPHASIS has so far covered three lakh individuals and mapped 14,000 Nepali migrants in Delhi, where the project has 43 peer educators in Delhi, besides nine outreach workers and five counsellors.

Also, it has four learning sites — in Shalimar Garden, Sarhaul, Naraina and Kapashera — other than two drop-in centres (DICs) in Jhilmil and Ganeshpuri.

ADVERTISEMENT
(Published 07 July 2013, 19:38 IST)

Follow us on

ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT