Making socio-political spaces accessible to women also means addressing social evils like child marriage, which limits approximately 12% of girls in Tamil Nadu (only reported cases) from completing their education and traps them in a cycle of disempowerment and poverty.
The Penn Collective participated in the 'State Level Consultation for a Child Marriage Free Tamil Nadu' on September 26, 2023, organized jointly by the Department of Social Welfare and Women Empowerment, Govt of Tamil Nadu and Kailash Satyarthi Foundation in Chennai.
The Penn Collective presented three key recommendations: the need to amend the Prohibition of Child Marriage Rules of Tamil Nadu; the need to prepare and publish a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) for handling child marriage cases; and the mainstreaming of best models in preventing child marriage from across the state.