Give GIRLS in India a CHANCE at life

Dear Donor,

Hope you and your loved ones are safe and healthy!!

Mentioning below some of the key highlights of our work between August and Dec 21.

1. Engaging with the adolescents and youth to enable them to negotiate on the issue of discrimination and violence, early marriage and their right to education

Taaron Ki Toli (Legion of Stars) Sessions The objective of TKT sessions is to strengthen adolescent’s understanding of gender and gender-based discrimination; their knowledge around rights; their agency to recognise, negotiate and act against discrimination and violence. This would help in bringing a shift in attitude within them wherein they can question and defy discriminatory norms and make informed decisions about marriage, pursue higher education and careers. We were able to reach total 43143 Ujjwal Taras and 19233 Roshan Taras in UP and Jharkhand. Three chapters were taught this month namely ‘Jan Pehchan Ho’, ‘Suno to sahi suno’ and ‘Saaf,santulit, swasth’. 113 sessions were conducted in Gorakhpur in schools and 247 in community. The chapter ‘Sabke samne’ was taken up during assembly.

Training of Team Change Leaders (TCLs) in Uttar Pradesh To help the TCLs strengthen their emerging leadership skills, training on the conceptual understanding of gender and discrimination, facilitation skills and the Child Safeguarding Policy are conducted on a regular basis. The training programme during the present reporting period was conducted in UP and Jharkhand in two batches with 68 participants and they learnt several tools and activities to address and explain gender stereotypes and the larger patriarchal structure. The TCLs learnt about different techniques of learning, and four Taaron ki Toli chapters namely ‘Yeh Kaun Hai’, ‘Suno Toh Sahi Suno’, ‘Saaf Santulit Swasth’ and ‘Do Atmakathaye’.

In Haryana, Independence Day was celebrated by Breakthrough team and team change leaders in many villages and engaged 2500 community members (including adolescents, youth, parents, teachers and stakeholders like FLWs and PRI members. Participants highlighted the current situation of women and girls, specially how their dreams are not encouraged and how they are pushed behind through poster making, songs of freedom, poetry etc. Team Change leaders felt ownership and pride in celebrating this day and talking about discrimination and violence women and girls face, in the events. In some villages and schools’ adolescents and young girls were invited for flag hoisting.

 2. Promoting and facilitating the engagement of the community in growth and development of women and girls and other social concerns

Community Engagement: Community Engagement Sessions are critical to bring about deep transformation as well as sustainable change. Community engagement during the reporting period included:

Participatory Rural Approaches (PRA) Training in Haryana

Four days training on Participatory Rural Approaches was organized to learn the participatory tools to deepen our work in the community. 28 Program team members from Haryana and Delhi team participated in the training. Training was well received by the participants and helped them in building better understanding of participatory approaches, they also got confidence of initiating community work and formation of youth group under deep transformation model.

PRA Training in Uttar Pradesh and Jharkhand

The social resource mapping and mapping of safe and unsafe places by adolescents and youth pressed the Pradhans (Village Heads) to ensure that the unsafe village spots are made safe. This is important as safety and security concerns are often cited as major reasons by parents to marry under aged daughters. PRA activities were conducted in 61 villages of UP with 2604 participants, and 13 villages with 243 participants in Jharkhand.

Community meetings- Dr. Mazhar Rashidi, an external facilitator, was hired to conduct community engagement sessions with the key stakeholders including PRIs, School Management committee members, Nari Sangh members and men’s groups. 66 meetings were conducted in which 3040 stakeholders participated from UP and Jharkhand.The objective was to reinforce adolescent issues among stakeholders and to ensure that girls are provided a safe, equitable, and nurturing environment in their communities.

This all work is happening because of support of DONORS like YOU. We would request you to continue your support and if possible recommend our project to like-minded people.

 

With Hope and Gratitude,

Aman Chhabra.