美国国家公共电台 NPR One Moment On A Vacation Changed Her Life — And The Lives Of Child Brides

One Moment On A Vacation Changed Her Life — And The Lives Of Child Brides

play pause stop mute unmute max volume 00:0004:26repeat repeat off Update Required To play the media you will need to either update your browser¹ to a recent version or update your Flash plugin. RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST: 

All this month, we'll be introducing you to some extraordinary people - people who break bindings. We're calling them Boundbreakers. And they're coming up with new ways to solve some of the oldest problems of the world. For today's profile, we're taking you to an unusual boarding school for village girls in northern India.

MONTAGNE: It is just after dinner. And the girls are playing clapping games like girls all over, except that nearly half of these young girls are married. NPR's Nurith Aizenman brings us the story of the unlikely duo who founded the school, a young Indian man with a knack² for computers and a much older Swiss aristocrat³.

NURITH AIZENMAN, BYLINE⁴: So can we sit down and chat?

Talk to the girls here, and you quickly get a sense of just how pervasive⁵ child marriage is in their villages. It's been illegal for decades in India. That's why I can't tell you any of the girls' names. But a bubbly 16-year-old tells me people ignore the law.

UNIDENTIFIED GIRL #1: (Foreign language spoken).

AIZENMAN: "Our parents just hold the weddings in secret," she says. "At night - very rushed." She was married when she was 9 years old. A bunch of other girls nod. They were all married around that age, too. A shy girl in a pink T-shirt says she didn't even understand what was happening at the time.

How did you feel when you realized?

UNIDENTIFIED GIRL #2: (Foreign language spoken).

AIZENMAN: "I was so said," she says, "because I had really wanted to study." And if you're a child bride, by age 15, you get sent to live with your husband to basically become a servant to your in-laws. And yet, here all these girls are, hanging out in their dorm room, planning their dream jobs.

UNIDENTIFIED GIRL #3: (Foreign language spoken) Teacher.

AIZENMAN: Teacher.

UNIDENTIFIED GIRL #4: (Foreign language spoken) Police officer.

AIZENMAN: Police officer. Because the founders⁶ of this place - it's called the Veerni Institute, and it's in the city of Jodhpur - have convinced the girl's parents to agree to a deal. The school offers free board and tuition. The parents promise to hold off sending the girls to their husbands until they've at least finished high school.

And this remarkably⁷ effective strategy for changing these girls' fate is the product of a collaboration⁸ between two rather unlikely individuals, starting with a 78-year-old Swiss aristocrat named Jacqueline de Chollet. For her, the journey began with the purchase of a shawl.

JACQUELINE DE CHOLLET: A shawl, exactly.

AIZENMAN: The year was 1993. And De Chollet, then in her 50s, was vacationing in northern India. She stopped at a dusty village and saw a woman in a house weaving a shawl.

DE CHOLLET: And she had three or four children, including a baby she was nursing in her arms. And she looked way older than her age.

AIZENMAN: So De Chollet offered to buy the shawl.

DE CHOLLET: And as soon as I gave her the money, a man walked in and took the money away from her.

AIZENMAN: De Chollet was outraged⁹.

DE CHOLLET: I felt this woman - nobody cares about her. She's off the map. She has no rights.

AIZENMAN: And De Chollet identified with this woman because for all her privilege, growing up in the 1950s...

DE CHOLLET: My generation of girls did not go to university in Switzerland. We were sent to secretarial school (laughter) and then expected to get married.

AIZENMAN: Which is what she had done - and found it stifling¹⁰. Now, by the early '90s, De Chollet had come into her own, gotten active with charities and women's rights groups. Still, it suddenly struck her that...

DE CHOLLET: Who, actually, was going to do anything for that particular woman and many women like her? Who was going to go on the ground and do something?

AIZENMAN: Then she thought, I am. She started small, raising money to bring basic health care to women in some villages. Then she shifted into education for girls. Village schools in northern India only go to fifth grade. And parents don't have a lot of money to spend on boarding school in the city.

For boys, maybe - for girls, no way. And for De Chollet, this was all about helping¹¹ women get power over their lives. It's hard to do that without education. So two things became clear.

She was going to have to get the girls into a proper school in the closest city, Jodhpur. And she was going to need a really great partner from that region. She was based in London.

DE CHOLLET: You cannot run a project from abroad. We needed to create a local leadership that could take the project to where it needs to go.

AIZENMAN: As it happened, De Chollet had her eye on a possible candidate.

DE CHOLLET: Call Skype. Hello? Hello? Hi, Mahendra. How are you?

MAHENDRA SHARMA: How are you?

DE CHOLLET: I'm fine.

AIZENMAN: The man De Chollet is calling is Mahendra Sharma. These days, they Skype all the time. But when they first met, Sharma was just a high school kid who was good with computers, a city guy from Jodhpur who De Chollet hired to help set up her group's email. His first impression?

SHARMA: So yeah, I started. And I remember very clearly they were not knowing anything about the internet.

AIZENMAN: Her first impression?

DE CHOLLET: Well, he was very shy - young man. Quite, you know, self-effacing.

AIZENMAN: But then a more experienced man who De Chollet was working with to recruit girls to the new boarding school quit. That guy told Sharma that men in the villages were openly hostile to the idea.

SHARMA: So he said villagers are too aggressive. They have become crazy. And it's a very bad idea to bring us here.

AIZENMAN: But Sharma figured if he could just sit with these fathers, talk it through - so night after night, he did, fielding questions like why won't you just educate our sons?

SHARMA: Why you are taking - what's the point? They are not going to remain with us. They will go to their in-laws. And if they are all well-educated, then it is very difficult for us to get groom¹² for them.

AIZENMAN: Well, Sharma would say, with an education, a girl can get a job and bring money into the in-laws' house. In-laws would want that. By the end of that first recruiting effort, the fathers of 39 girls had come around. And Sharma - he decided¹³ this school was his calling.

As hard as it was, you could actually really make a difference.

SHARMA: Yes, you're right.

AIZENMAN: Today, parents beg to send their girls here. They have to turn away nearly 300 a year. And a few months ago, a group of fathers stunned¹⁴ Jacqueline de Chollet. They asked her, how about helping us put our girls through college?

DE CHOLLET: I was just speechless. I thought it was so fantastic.

AIZENMAN: Best of all, she says, are the reports from the girls' mothers. When their daughters come home, they demand to be treated the same as their brothers. Just as much food - they won't be pushed around. When De Chollet compares them to that woman with a shawl all those years ago, it makes her proud.

DE CHOLLET: No way are they going to have the money taken away from them - no way - (laughter) no way.

AIZENMAN: These girls, she says - they know their rights. And they're equipped to fight for them. Nurith Aizenman, NPR News.

(SOUNDBITE OF CLAPPING GAMES)

1 browser   

n.浏览者

参考例句：

• View edits in a web browser.在浏览器中看编辑的效果。
• I think my browser has a list of shareware links.我想在浏览器中会有一系列的共享软件链接。

2 knack   

n.诀窍，做事情的灵巧的，便利的方法

参考例句：

• He has a knack of teaching arithmetic.他教算术有诀窍。
• Making omelettes isn't difficult,but there's a knack to it.做煎蛋饼并不难，但有窍门。

3 aristocrat   

n.贵族，有贵族气派的人，上层人物

参考例句：

• He was the quintessential english aristocrat.他是典型的英国贵族。
• He is an aristocrat to the very marrow of his bones.他是一个道道地地的贵族。

4 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

5 pervasive   

adj.普遍的；遍布的，(到处)弥漫的；渗透性的

参考例句：

• It is the most pervasive compound on earth.它是地球上最普遍的化合物。
• The adverse health effects of car exhaust are pervasive and difficult to measure.汽车尾气对人类健康所构成的有害影响是普遍的，并且难以估算。

6 founders   

n.创始人( founder的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• He was one of the founders of the university's medical faculty. 他是该大学医学院的创建人之一。 来自辞典例句
• The founders of our religion made this a cornerstone of morality. 我们宗教的创始人把这看作是道德的基石。 来自辞典例句

7 remarkably   

ad.不同寻常地，相当地

参考例句：

• I thought she was remarkably restrained in the circumstances. 我认为她在那种情况下非常克制。
• He made a remarkably swift recovery. 他康复得相当快。

8 collaboration   

n.合作，协作；勾结

参考例句：

• The two companies are working in close collaboration each other.这两家公司密切合作。
• He was shot for collaboration with the enemy.他因通敌而被枪毙了。

9 outraged   

a.震惊的，义愤填膺的

参考例句：

• Members of Parliament were outraged by the news of the assassination. 议会议员们被这暗杀的消息激怒了。
• He was outraged by their behavior. 他们的行为使他感到愤慨。

10 stifling   

a.令人窒息的

参考例句：

• The weather is stifling. It looks like rain. 今天太闷热，光景是要下雨。
• We were stifling in that hot room with all the windows closed. 我们在那间关着窗户的热屋子里，简直透不过气来。

11 helping   

n.食物的一份&adj.帮助人的，辅助的

参考例句：

• The poor children regularly pony up for a second helping of my hamburger. 那些可怜的孩子们总是要求我把我的汉堡包再给他们一份。
• By doing this, they may at times be helping to restore competition. 这样一来, 他在某些时候,有助于竞争的加强。

12 groom   

vt.给（马、狗等）梳毛，照料，使...整洁

参考例句：

• His father was a groom.他父亲曾是个马夫。
• George was already being groomed for the top job.为承担这份高级工作，乔治已在接受专门的培训。

13 decided   

adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的

参考例句：

• This gave them a decided advantage over their opponents.这使他们比对手具有明显的优势。
• There is a decided difference between British and Chinese way of greeting.英国人和中国人打招呼的方式有很明显的区别。

14 stunned   

adj. 震惊的，惊讶的 动词stun的过去式和过去分词

参考例句：

• The fall stunned me for a moment. 那一下摔得我昏迷了片刻。
• The leaders of the Kopper Company were then stunned speechless. 科伯公司的领导们当时被惊得目瞪口呆。