visakhapatnam in a first of its kind initiative in andhra pradesh the vizianagaram district administration has formulated sakhi concept as a holistic approach to promote inclusive development of adolescent girlsthe key objective is to improve the health nutrition social economic and education indicators of adolescent girls through community participationapart from the prevalent dropout issue after class viii in this section of girls in the district the lack of aspirations livelihood skills and financial literacy has emerged as a challenge for the district administration it was also observed that a few girls viewed marriage as the only hope to escape the clutches of poverty social repression and parental control frequent incidents of cyber bullying of young girls harassment and cheating through social media early marriages and jobrelated frauds were also reported in the district before fully implementing the sakhi initiative an anganwadi wise survey was carried out to identify the girls aged between 9 and 21 and the issues being faced by them a database pertaining to school dropouts was also prepared as a preludeas many as 70250 girls have been enrolled in the 2492 villagelevel sakhi groups the designated anganwadi teacher or local schoolteachers is serving as the mentorcumtrainer for sakhi groups while the women police anm anganwadi teachers asha worker and teachers have formed the support system for these groups in the villagesthanks to strenuous efforts put in by the district administration the sakhi groups have so far prevented 108 child marriages in vizianagaram district as many as 1200 parents have changed their decision of child marriages after listening to the sakhi groups about 700 girl dropouts rejoined schools and 118 cases pertaining to eveteasing were resolved the adolescent girls who were identified as anaemic are being treated for the condition under this initiativevizianagaram district collector a surya kumari explained the achievements of sakhi and how it empowered the adolescent girls different teams including the health department teachers police etc took care of different aspects of adolescent girl care such as nutrition and health awareness women safety prevention of child marriages training on cyber security training and participation in financial activities etc the sakhi initiative over time yielded excellent results in vizianagaram the district administration has identified the best practices and replicated them among all groups we will include more focus areas based on the feedback from sakshi members like martial art training improving learning outcomes vocational training etc said surya kumari