teachers and role models

Out of tiny brick huts coupled with towers of cow manure, the women of the village emerge. Dressed in vibrant coloured saris, they wear their family fortunes in the form of gold and silver: lining their wrists, dripping from their ears. Their babies sit hip top and wear heavy eyeliner -- serving as a third eye to ward off jinxes, exaggerating their already wide-eyed stares.

There are visitors in town.

We came from the big city -- only an hour's rickshaw ride away, but it is the difference between harvesting wheat for roti in the morning, and buying it in the market.

Vandanaji, a veteran social worker, and our leader for the day is dressed in a starched sari in Halloween-orange. She has a chipped front tooth, a wide smile and you can tell she doesn't take shit from anyone.

"The Teacher Role Model project is starting in this village. Are you going to attend?" she asks the women. As they hesitate, she turns her attention to the shoeless children who have wandered over to look at us foreigners.

"Are you in school? You should be in school."

We're in villages today, checking out locations for World Literacy Canada's Teacher Role Model (TRM) pilot project. The idea is to start a cycle of female empowerment -- by training women from rural communities in leadership, literacy and anti-oppressive theory, then hiring them to teach what they learn to less educated community women.

The potential venues for these women's meetings are bare; sometimes lacking fans and adequate bathrooms. But the trainees are eager and inspired.

“Women often do not go to school because they have to work at home or in the field. I want to become a role model so younger girls can look up to me," Pushpa Devi says in her village Aura.

Later, in a neighbouring village, I interview another young woman who is eager to become a TRM. But a group of young men hover and snicker nearby, and we can tell she is feeling uncomfortable as I probe her on her thoughts about gender inequity in her town.

Vanadanaji marches over. Women confronting men is unheard of, but she is unapologetic and unabashed. She lectures them loudly about being disruptive of our interview.

In a village where women are only starting to gain a voice, the men were for once, silent.