I have done my two months social internship in the government organization named Saath charitable trust which is located in Ahmedabad, Gujarat. Throughout the internship I met many different personas whom we consider as others and do not make them feel inclusive. This internship was an amazing experience of my life, of course it started with a lot of nervousness and stress but it also ended with a lot of memories, tears and joy. This wonderful opportunity was given to me by our university as it was mandatory for all the 1st year graduate students to go for social work in their respective hometowns. During the internship, I have gone through so many ups and downs. I used to work for the NTL (Non-traditional livelihood) program. The NTL team used to visit all the unprivileged areas of Ahmedabad where people have lack of opportunities in terms of food, water, cleanliness and the most important employment. I joined their team without having any kind of idea how the journey is going to end and how I’m going to be helpful to them. NTL team basically targets women community as we all know that the gender discrimination still exists today in the world. NTL has a majority of the women workforce in their group than men, initially, I wondered, why? One of the female program managers explained it to me that to showcase the world out there that how capable we are, we just have to take an initiative from our side only. This is how the kind of passion and confidence they have to make the other women realise about their self-worth.
I used to go at the centre around 10 o’ clock in the morning with my fellow co- intern. In the first week of the internship, I visited few unprivileged areas from where I got to know about the condition of those people who do not have any kind of access of any essentialities. I went to visit their homes and ask do you have any women in your house from the age of 18 to 25 who are looking for job? The moment they used to hear the word “JOB” the answer used to be always NO. I was not surprised at all because I know somewhere in the heart that even if the family have a greater number of women than men in their house, they are not going to allow them to go out for work. NTL started distributing templates in their areas with the tagline of getting the training of working at a petrol pump in the position of supervisor and worker at zero cost. After a few days people started coming to ask us are you saying that our daughters or wives are going to work at petrol pump? That’s when we made them understand why they can’t if they have the enough potential. I said to them let just give them hope and wings to fly, I make sure they will never let you feel down. And this is how I became successful in breaking the stereotypes of the society I live in.