Publicizing the Upcoming Women's Camp

Five women from our group travelled to Ramavaram on Tuesday, Sept. 9 to start informing the women about our upcoming Women's Camp, which will take place on Sept. 21 in Ramavaram. Thanks to Bharatan of Ananya and Sundar, who is familiar with Chennai's women's groups, for coming along with us and guiding us on how to talk to the women in a way that will really convince them to come. We made a flyer in tamil, which we handed to every woman there. Hopefully that will help them to mark the date and be there. Overall, the trip was uneventful. Children tailed us as usual, as we made our way to every house and personally informed every woman that was home to come to the camp to see women doctors.
During this trip, I started to feel like the residents of the slum are starting to warm up to us and our group a lot more. They seem to be less wary of us and our motives. We found out this time that there was a previous group that actually kidnapped children from this community and that is why they are so frightened to trust outsiders. Since we have been visiting them for about 6 months now, they have started to like us a lot more and are willing to trust us, a little at a time. I do hope to see this trust and friendship grow over the next few months.
We will return one more time next week to visit the women and insist that they come to the camp. Hopefully multiple publicity trips will maximize our turnout.