Self-defence training for adolescent girls

BHUBANESWAR: With the atrocities against women on the rise across the nation, city authorities have started imparting self-defence training to adolescent girls, particularly from slums in Bhubaneswar Town Centre District (BTCD). The drive under the Socially Smart Bhubaneswar initiative is expected to boost their self-confidence and contribute a lot towards making them vigilant, strong and smart. While 125 girls from 24 slums have been imparted training so far, another batch of 65 adolescent girls are undertaking the training at Utkal Karate School in the city. 

The group is followed by a new batch of 64 girls who have been inducted for training from Tuesday. Even as the city authorities plan to train 320 girls from the slums, the number of girls showinest to enroll for the 10-day training has witnessed a significant rise after the first two batches.  Socially Smart Bhubaneswar is a joint initiative of Bhubaneswar Smart City Limited, Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation and UNFPA. It is aimed at strengthening social components of the Smart City. The girls selected from the slums for the training have been identified by project implementation partner Humara Bachpan. 

Chief of Utkal Karate School Hari Patnaik said apart from the self-defence training the girls are also being motivated to have more confidence and not to panic, or be stressed unnecessarily while facing the anti-social elements. With better confidence any girl can face these types of rogue elements, he said.Stating the incident of Sujata Sahu (26), a girl from Rourkela who displayed extreme courage to resist two road-side romeos and captured their bike, Patnaik said it was her attitude to protest, which helped her fend off the anti-social elements. Sujata is currently imparting self-defence training to college-going girls in the Steel City after being trained at Utkal Karate School.