Today

Parvati lives nearby the Maheela Production Center where she has been working for 7 years now.  She lives with her parents and other relatives.  She is one of the few members of the household who brings money home. She cannot write nor read and had no source of income before.
She is extremely grateful to Womens’ Foundation for providing her with a job but also with drugs at reduced prices or food. Through her work at Maheela, she has become an essential support for her family. This job has changed their lives.

Her story

Parvati was married away by her family when she was 10 years old. Her husband was then 20 and had a severe psychological condition; in the village people used to say he was mad. Relatives of the husband-to-be had even warned Parvati’s father no to marry his daughter to the man. She learned she was given in marriage when some neighbours who had received the invitation from her parents started to congratulate her. Very soon after the wedding, her husband and her in-laws stared to treat her as a slave. She was only 10 but she had to get up at 4 in the morning to clean the house, cook, go and get heavy buckets of water. Her husband very soon started to beat her up severely, to the point of breaking her bones several times and putting her life at risk. She tried to escape but did not succeed.

She stayed with him 9 years. She finally got so sick that her mother-in-law reacted in the end and seeing her half dead, told her to go back to her parents’s house.