Baagh Pari - Tiger Watch

Baagh Pari : A Verandah Initiative

For many years, we were often questioned about our inability to include girls from the Mogya traditional hunting tribe in the Mogya Education Program. In response, we cited socio-cultural reasons for Mogya parents’ aversion to the idea of their daughters being lodged in the then-program hostel. There was simply no getting around this impasse at the time.

However, in 2020, we shifted to a home-schooling model with a team of 6 mobile teachers, and it suddenly became possible to educate Mogya girl students along with their male peers in their respective villages—a completely unprecedented but welcome development.

It was at this critical junction that Anjali Patel Mehta, founder of the sustainable luxury resort wear line Verandah and a member of Tiger Watch’s board of directors, chose to launch and support Baagh Pari, a pioneering specialised initiative that seeks to consolidate and further encourage the recent gains being made in the education of Mogya girls.

At present, the initiative seeks to bolster the education of Mogya girls by providing specialised teacher training to our team of 6 mobile teachers.

The program currently covers 80 Mogya girl students in 10 villages.

This initiative also provides Mogya girl students with materials that significantly aid the learning process, such as stationary, relevant reading material, and appropriate clothing for a ‘classroom’ environment.

The initiative also provides vocational training to the Mogya girls, enabling them to be financially independent and thus empowered to take charge of their own lives. For example through Dhonk, many girl students have been given vocational training in local textile-making.