Give GIRLS in India a CHANCE at life

Dear Donor,

Hope you and your family are safe and healthy !! We can just wish that these tough days are over soon and we all come out stronger. 

We had to close our on field work from 10th March but there were some really good things we were able to do from Jan 1st till 10th March. We hope reading what we were able to do with your support will lift-up your spirits in these testing times.

AN AMAZING TURN AROUND

We would like to share a unique and interesting story of change that we saw in the Principal of a school in Haryana where we run our programme. 

Mr. Sunil (original name) Principal of a school in Hasanpur village in Jhajjar district had a very negative attitude towards NGOs. Whenever a BT facilitator would visit the school and seek an appointment to meet him he would refuse on one pretext or the other. Due to the lack of understanding of what and how BT operates, he behaved in a rather disrespectful manner with our staff. So much so that he went to the extent of saying

“Don’t waste our time, your organization and its programme does not mean anything for us or our students. If you need money, take 100 rupees and don’t visit our school again because I will not allow you to conduct sessions in my schools”.

Nevertheless, our team members kept in touch with him and whenever they got a chance they would try and meet him but it was in vain. He neither attended any of the training sessions nor did he allow his staff and teachers to attend. This was becoming a challenge for us and our team had to keep trying.

When we organized training for teachers during this reporting period, we invited him specially to attend and observe the training so that it would help him understand more about our work and how it is done at the school level.

Finally, our persistence yielded good results and he agreed to come for the Teacher training. Since it is very important to get buy-in and support from principals and staff for smooth execution and success of the program we took the opportunity of his presence to have teachers share their positive experiences of working with Breakthrough. We also made a presentation on how Breakthrough works in schools of Haryana and the impact the program has had on adolescents’ minds and lives.

After attending the session Mr. Sunil was honest to admit that attending the session has been an eye opener for him. He was very apologetic about his behaviour towards the BT staff and because he now has understood how the program will be implemented and the impact it would create; he would wholeheartedly support our work.

A few days later when our staff visited the school again to seek permission to conduct a teacher training session, we were delighted to see not only a complete change in his behaviour but he also has allocated adequate time to conduct our sessions

CLASSROOM SESSIONS

Training with Younger Adolescents (Ujjwal Tara -11-14yrs): The main topics covered this time were:

Humare Adhikar: This session improves the understanding of students about their rights such as the right to education, health, mobility, expression etc. We used the Human Rights Tree to explain the concept of rights and sources or institutions that ensure the access to their rights.

Kya Yah Sunder Hai:  This session helps students to decode the obsession with beauty and bust myths about fairness and muscular bodies. In the long run, these chapters will help TKT students identify different forms of discriminatory practices, gender stereotyping related to so-called beauty norms around them and respond to it

The classroom sessions provide a safe platform and facilitative environment, where adolescents can participate in decision making on issues affecting their lives. In the long run, by building their knowledge, adolescents will be able to adopt positive practices, access preventive, curative, protective services and enhance their skills and participation within their schools, family and community.

Training with Older Adolescents (Roshan Tara -15-18yrs): The main topics covered this time were:

My Unique Personality: This session aims to talk about the uniqueness of every individual. It also talks about how one generally behaves and demonstrates their values and other attributes in their sphere and how it links with their personalities and may contribute to their career. We also used RAISEC – a psychometric test to sensitise them about their personality traits. RAISEC stands for Realistic, Artistic, Investigative, Social, Enterprising and Conventional form of personality.  This test was well received by the students and the class teachers. This was a new thing for them and helped them learn about the personality traits and its role in career planning.

Career fair was the 2^nd touch point for the Roshan Tara groups as it aligns with the journey of building career and aspiration of adolescents.

In all the in 6 intervention districts- Sonipat, Panipat, Karnal, Rohtak, Jhajjar and Gurugram, our monthly average reach in schools was…

Adolescent reach-11-14 age group-7829

Adolescent reach-15-18 age group-11833

TEACHER'S TRAINING AT SCHOOL LEVEL 

We conducted school level teachers training in all the interventions schools of all the districts to discuss the plan for Career Fair and to get support from the schools during the Mela. Teachers welcomed the idea of career fair and shared that it will definitely help the students learn more about various career opportunities. In all the intervention schools, in all the district we reached out t0 1098 teachers including school principals.

Training conducted on district level also helped us:

1. Get buy-in by introducing the Adolescent Empowerment Programme and sharing experiences of teachers and principals from the same school who are closely part of this intervention and also attended the district level training in last quarter.
2. Pitch the impact on Adolescent Empowerment Program from the JPAL results and change stories from RCT intervention.
3. Get buy-in of all teachers within the school to organize Peer Educator Meetings in school and also to conduct Career Fair in the school.

 KISHORI MELA(ADOLESCENTS FAIR)

In the last quarter, we organised Kishori Mela in the all the 123 interventions schools in all the 6 districts in Haryana. Keeping the theme of Career Guidance, we organised as a Career fair under Kishori Mela for the Roshan Tara group and the older adolescents in the school.  We also mobilised students from classes 11th and 12th, since they would soon be making career choices.

During the career fair, Breakthrough Facilitators shared information with the students about various career options (further education opportunities under different streams and interest and also the job options they can go after 10^th or 12^th) using a career flex. This flex will also be given to schools to display at a common space, so that everyone can refer to it in future as well.   

We have also shown the VR film in some of Kishori Melas, film talks about the aspiration of adolescent girls. Film helped in facilitating the discussion about; how gender stereotypes associated with career options can be tackled and informed them about jobs available in public and private sectors.

• We reached out to 16232, studentsin schools in all the districts.

We can't thank you enough for your support as it is support from you which makes our work possible.

THANKS AGAIN !!! STAY SAFE .