By Nikita Jha | Programme Associate
We appreciate your continued support and contribution to ECF’s Action for Equality (AfE) programme committed to raising Gender Equitable Boys in Pune, India. It is because of this constant support that ECF engages adolescent boys across 20 communities in Pune.
At ECF, between June 2019 - August 2019, we have launched Cycle 24 of our Foundation programme and Leadership Programme (15-week intervention)
During this period:
AfE Foundation Programme (FP): Our AfE mentors have mobilised and enrolled 262 participants across 20 communities in Pune. These participants will graduate in September for the second stage of the AfE programme.
AfE Leadership Programme (LP): A total of 131 participants were enrolled for the leadership programme from 18 communities in Pune. They will graduate as leaders in the month of September.
Some programme highlights during this period were:
Addition and removal of communities: In Cycle 24 we have successfully engaged with 20 communities in Pune. We feel happy to announce that we have recently partnered with Ummeed. With their help we have launched our intervention in a new community called Vadgaon Budruk in Pune.We have discontinued our intervention in Bibwewadi community from this cycle as the number of participants has constantly been declining in this community.
Duration for the Leadership Programme: In the last quarter we had noted a significant decline in the attendance of participants in the Leadership Programme. Hence we held consultation meetings with the participants and the alumni to understand the reasons for this. It was noted that the participants dropped out because of exams and festivals. Some participants also found the sessions to be content heavy and the 30-week engagement to be tedious. Therefore, considering the feedback we decided to decrease the duration of the intervention to 15 weeks. We also plan to review the curriculum to ensure that the modules are accessible.
As part of the team development, we have been conducting regular mentor training for mentors every week. We will conduct our intensive team training for all staff in the next quarter where we will invite an external resource person to deliver sessions on various topics related to Gender.
Focus group discussions (FGD) with girls: We have been trying various strategies to include the voices of girls in our programmes and to normalise interactions between girls and boys. During this cycle we invited adolescent girls to FGDs with our participants to discuss gender-related issues faced by women and girls in the community. Many girls talked about the negative effects of street sexual harassment on their lives and boys were able to hear first hand how girls get pulled out of school as their parents fear for their safety. This experience reinforced our participant’s zeal to take action against gender-based violence.
Action Events: From this cycle our Leadership Programme participants will conduct 4 action events in their respective communities. The Leadership Programme participants have decided to perform street plays on the issue of ‘Street Sexual Harassment’. The action event is ongoing in all the 18 communities. Our Foundation programme action events will begin in the month of September. The topic decided by our participants is gender-based discrimination. We will provide an update on this in the next report.
Big, Meet and Greet (BMG) event: We will be hosting our BMG for Cycle 24 in September, at the end of the Leadership Programme. From this cycle on we have decided to discontinue BMG events for the Foundation and Action Programmes.
As of August 2019, with your support, ECF has been able to successfully reach out to and enrol 5339 boys to Action for Equality programme. A total of 3037 adolescent boys have graduated and pledged to become allies with women to support gender-equality in their communities. These numbers will be updated in the month of September after the completion of Cycle 24.
We thank you for your contribution and supporting our mission, to raise every boy in India to be Gender Equitable.
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