Every year, 1.5 million girls in India are married before the age of 18. Early marriage often results in gender-based violence, lack of education, socio-economic hardship. This severly impacts on the young girls’ mental health. In Karnataka, the project partners with a movement of early married girls to build a community-led, sustainable model for mental health support—raising awareness, delivering services, and advocating for policy change.
Project
Initiatives for Married Adolescent Girls’ Empowerment (IMAGE India)
The IMAGE programme seeks to empower girls who have married young.
Stories and Updates
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Thangaperumal Ponpandi
Country Manager, IndiaIndia has the largest number of early married girls in the world. Addressing their concerns, especially their mental health is the need of the hour. This is what IMAGE aims to do
Background
At 230 million, India accounts for the world’s highest number of early married girls (EMGs). In large parts of rural India, it is a custom for girls to marry before 18. Poverty, lack of awareness and tradition are some of the main reasons.
Marrying young has enormous disadvantages. The girls have children early and face severe health complications. They even discontinue their schooling. This keeps them from earning an income, making them financially dependent and in some cases forcing them to succumb to domestic abuse.
Karnataka accounts for 23.2% of child marriages in India, with the practice prevalent in almost all districts. EMGs in these regions face numerous mental health challenges, such as depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder, stemming from isolation, domestic violence, and early motherhood.
These conditions are compounded by societal and familial pressures, lack of autonomy, and restricted access to education. Unfortunately, only 1 in 10 people with mental health disorders in India receive evidence-based treatment, and access is even more limited for EMGs due to the stigma surrounding mental health and a lack of resources.
Goals
Our Approach
The project is implemented in the districts of Belagavi, Bagalkote, Bidar, Chikkabalapur and Chamrajanagara in the state of Karnataka, India.
Community led
Focusing on interventions on building capacities of the early married girls (EMG), their families and community members to respond to mental health needs of EMGs.
Sustainable Mental Health Support Model
Increase scale of access to services, training girls as champions for change, involving families to create support systems for girls, leveraging use of research and technology, and influencing policy.
Results
- Successful enrollment of 2,019 early married girls (EMGs) into the programme, marking a significant milestone in scale of reach.
- Identification and induction of 40 early married girls as Community Champions, who were trained on mental health and well being to lead peer support and advocacy efforts.
- Completion of a baseline study with 1,466 EMGs, using research tools co-developed with the National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences (NIMHANS), providing valuable data to inform project strategies.
- Development of core training modules and IEC materials, including three mental health modules, educational posters, and a brochure, to build awareness and facilitate knowledge-sharing across the community.
Results of the IMAGE Movement
The previous phase of the project (from 2019 to 2024) worked towards building early married girls into a movement of change to improve their access to rights, opportunities and services in Karnataka, India.
- Successfully prevented over 1,500 child marriages through targeted project interventions.
- Enrolled 17,000 early married girls and survivors into the movement, supporting their empowerment and holistic development.
- Trained more than 2,500 grassroots-level Child Marriage Prohibition Officers (CMPOs) and sensitised 1,000 frontline workers on health issues affecting early married girls.
- Achieved state-level recognition from the government, with IEC materials developed and published to raise awareness about the harmful consequences of child marriage.
Our partners
Implementing Partners
Funding Partners
Ananya Birla Foundation
The Ananya Birla Foundations vision is voicing and building awareness of causes on all spectrums and creating a safe, equanimous and stigma-free environment for the community.
Comic Relief UK
Comic Relief is a major UK charity, with a vision of a just world, free from poverty.