On a July afternoon in Upparapalli village in the state of Andhra Pradesh, southern India, something remarkable was happening. Inside a classroom, a group of teenage school girls trilled a lilting melody in honour of 15-year-old Savitri Pullakunta, whose marriage had been successfully thwarted by their collective effort. The young girls who had gathered in this school in the Adoni division of Andhra's Kurnool district were members of a girls' collective. Such collectives are part of a strategy by UN, governmental, and non-governmental agencies to boost the confidence of teenage girls and to fight child marriage-a practice that continues across the country, particularly in rural backwaters, despite a legal ban.
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