State girl on a mission against child marriage

Ranchi: Tabbu Afroz, a 17-year-old girl of Muri town, 65kms from Ranchi and daughter of a cycle mechanic is on her way to New York to address thousands of people from across the globe. Tabbu will be participating in a programme organized by international NGO Breakthrough on November 7, where she would be talking about how she works for preventing child marriage in her home town and her family.
Deputy Director of early marriage projectof Breakthrough in Jharkhand, Chandra Nath Mishra said, “Tabbu is the only girl from India who has been selected to address the programme in New York. She has been selected after the initiative she took for preventing child marriages and making people in her town aware about the evils of child marriage.”
When Tabbu was 15, her elder sister, who was then 17, was made to quit school to get married. Tabbu had heard about child marriage being an offence in various programmes organized by NGOs in her school and thus she started convincing her parents and other family members to stop her sister’s marriage.
In a previous meeting with TOI, Tabbu had said that when she started voicing protests against child marriage, her parents and family abused her and did not listen to her at all. She had said, “I had to take help of my teachers who contacted some NGOs and finally we succeeded in saving my sister from child marriage.”
Since then Tabbu has been going around spreading the message against child marriage and making people of her locality realize why it is important for girls to study and choose a career.
Tabbu has recently taken admission in Doranda College, Ranchi and her elder sister, who was to be married away is now 19, and pursuing a course in computers.
Tabbu’s father, Md. Ramzan is very happy with the success of his daughter and is thankful to her for making him stop the marriage of his elder daughter. He said, “We belong to a very poor family and our community does not have the trend of allowing girls for higher education. Instead, they are married off at a very young age. However, now that my daughters arestudying, I feel really proud as I know that they are going to get good jobs and will have a better life.”