Sister indeed

CHENNAI: When Chahat Malhotra first met her mentee, the conversation was slow and shy. But she came prepared with stationery and stickers, and the class eight girl warmed up to the 22-year-old over the course of two hours. All through this first meeting, Chahat asked gentle questions to the girl, and they wrote down their answers on the stickers. At the end of the session, the little girl wrote their names inside a big heart, and it was then Chahat knew that she had no cause to worry.

“She had said that she was interested in art, and since I’m a designer, I thought it would go very well if I mentored her. She’s very shy, but we mostly talk about her family — her sister, brother and mother — and her daily routine,” said Malhotra, who met her mentee through the Big Sister Program, a non-profit mentorship initiative for underprivileged girls. Established in November 2018 by Anannya Parikh, the initiative hopes to give underprivileged and orphaned girls the opportunity to have a guide. “I was lucky enough to have wonderful mentors through my life, who have inspired me professionally and personally when I could never do it myself.

These girls don’t have that support,” said Anannya. The idea struck her after conducting a workshop for the girls from the Anjuman-e-Himayathe- Islam school in April 2018. The girls in the programme are between the ages of 12 and 16, and the sisters are all adults below the age of 30. This familiarity and closeness of age helps the girls open up and share their thoughts easily, said Anannya. The one-on-one mentorship programme is held once a week in one-hour sessions, and can range from academic to personal mentorship. Volunteers participate in a 12-week programme. “Through this course, I learned a lot about myself, too.

I am quite impatient. I sat down with my mentee, and as she did not know English very well, I was explaining one sentence to her five or six times. It made me patient,” said Malhotra, adding that small acts of spending time with the children meant a lot to them. In the future, Anannya hopes to expand the non-profit to various Tier-1 and T i e r- 2 c i t i e s, as well as start an online mentor ship programme. For details, visit www.bigsisterprogram. com