“As a child, I was awestruck by what nurses could do. And yet I knew that was an impossible dream for me,” says Ruksana Khatun.
Ruksana saw her life spread out before her: She’d be forced to drop out of school to work in the fields and support her family, as her father had a respiratory illness. She’d get married, and that would be that. But joining a Youth Resource Cell at age 11 changed everything.
“Girls get married at 15, and we think it’s normal,” says Ruksana. “But the YRC expanded what I understood was possible. What I understood about my own body. We aren’t taught how a child is born, we’re just taught how a child gets married.”
Ruksana’s parents pushed her to marry at 16, and she flatly refused, emboldened by the YRC.
“I told my father that I’d marry after I finished my education and got a great job. I convinced them: I’m not leaving you. I’m by your side. But allow me this, and I’ll be able to support you so much more,” she says.
In 2020, as millions of Indians working in the informal economy lost income due to pandemic lockdowns, Thoughtshop Foundation launched its livelihood program, to create opportunities for girls. They now train graduates of their YRCs to become dialysis technicians, emergency medical technicians, nursing assistants and karate instructors. The program was built, according to Thoughtshop director Himalini Varma, to answer the question: “If they move away from early marriage — what are they moving towards?”
Thoughtshop collaborated with a local nursing institution and created a heavily subsidized residential program for 15 of their graduates. The opportunity was Ruksana’s dream materialized, and she leapt at the chance to leave her village to live and study in Kolkata for the first time. She completed the program in six months, and began working as a nursing assistant just as India’s need for medical professionals skyrocketed during the deadly Delta variant wave.
Today, she works in the cancer ward of a local hospital, where she is the top nursing assistant; she was recently asked to lead a training for 80 nurses about compassionate patient care.
“I’ve always had the desire to help others. Thoughtshop helped me become the woman I was always meant to be. I don’t treat my patients as patients, but as my own family members. This is the dream I’ve held since childhood,” she says. “To hold them in their fear, and help them believe that things will improve.”
