Empower Future Leaders from Mumbai Red-Light Areas

We took advantage of the Diwali Holiday by taking a 3 week trip to Kashmir and Ladakh. For a month prior to the trip, we focused on lessons of the Kashmir conflict, including film discussions, the history of pre and post-Partitioned India, and Kashmiri culture. During the trip, the girls wrote journals and we had frequent discussions about what they learned along the way. After a few days in Srinagar, we traversed the mountains in a van for 20 hours in order to reach Leh, Ladakh. From there, we took a four day trek through the mountains with the female run and led Ladakhi Women’s Travel Company (http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/2011/nov/04/trek-himalayas-ladakh-india-female ).  We then spent 4 days at SECMOL (Students' Educational and Cultural Movement of Ladakh), a self-sustainable campus, where the Revolutionaries participated in daily chores, English classes, and also presented some gender & sexuality and sex ed workshops to the SECMOL students. The Revolutionaries are preparing a multi-media project that will include pictures and narrations of their experiences from the trip and the lessons learned in Kashmir. The theme for our project was ‘Journeys’, and the girls’ individual journeys were transformative, as was the overall Kranti journey!

During the Christmas and New Year’s holidays, four of our girls went on a 10 day Vipassana meditation retreat for teens. They practiced meditation, mindfulness, and staying silent (well, almost silent) for 10 days! Most of the girls are continuing what they learned during the retreat and making time for daily meditation, which has really helped with mental and emotional health. Additionally, Kranti has started doing ten minutes of group meditation every night before bed.

This past month, Kranti’s Revolutionaries have had an opportunity to speak at a few conferences. Shweta represented Kranti at the Urban Poverty Workshop in Mumbai and again at the ACM DEV 2013 conference in Bangalore.  This month, the girls will be presenting at another conference in Mumbai as well as a class an alternative education course at Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS).  We are fortunate to have so many speaking opportunities for the Revolutionaries and continue to seek ways to make them visible as leaders.

Links:

• Visit Kranti's Facebook Page for Frequent Revolutionary Updates!
• Check out SECMOL. Our girls liked interacting with the students

June 2012: Kranti’s SJE Goes Global

In June, our local social justice education went global!  One of the Revolutionaries, Aparna, taught a series of sex education workshops for teenage girls at Project Crayons (http://www.projectcrayonsindia.org/).

And we are happy to announce that her sex education class was not only shared with the youth of Project Crayons but also made international news! Via the NY Times and NDTV, Aparna was able to educate and inform the world about her ideas of safe sex, clear up misconceptions about pregnancy and menstruation, and discuss the hardships sex workers face when getting medical treatment. Please follow the link to read the article and watch Aparna's honest and candid lesson about sex education. http://india.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/06/meet-aparna-mumbais-teenage-sex-educator/

Summer vacation wrapped up as the Revolutionaries spent a week at a Rural Excursion Camp in Maharashtra. The girls spent time trekking, enjoying the forest, climbing trees, making new friends, and learning different skills, including rifle shooting!

Most of the Revolutionaries began a new school year in mid-June. We now have girls in 5^th, 7^th, 8^th, and 12^th English standards as well as 9^th and 10^th Hindi standards. The first few weeks of school were a dizzying exercise in organizing schedules for school, classes, tuition, and extra-curricular activities as each girl has a different daily schedule. Now, however, we have settled into a busy—yet consistent—routine, which includes the help of many volunteer tutors and at least one guest speaker per weekend.

July and August 2012: Revolutionaries Travel and Volunteer

Two of our Revolutionaries have a break from the demands of school and decided to spend some time volunteering and traveling. In her two months break between 10^th and 11^th standards, Laxmi chose to travel to Nepal to volunteer at a rural school, Maya Universe Academy, teaching Art and English to children. Here is the school’s website: http://www.mayauniverseacademy.org/.

Shweta, who passed her 12^th board exams last spring and is currently taking a gap year, also traveled to Nepal, where she taught English to monks in a Buddhist monastery and sex ed to Nepali girls. Both Laxmi and Shweta returned return home in early August,; Laxmi started 11^th standard in arts, and Shweta took a few days to study for the TOEFL exam before departing for Jharkhand, where she volunteering with the Gender Resource Center in the city of Ranchi for the remainder of the month.

For the rest of the Revolutionaries, the month of July was one of school, homework, and continued learning. Four of the Revolutionaries still make weekly trips to Project Crayons in order to teach on Sundays—in addition to Aparna’s sex ed classes, they have also been presenting classes on leadership and self-esteem.  We had a volunteer named Surhabi from Stanford University in California who worked  with the girls and helped them plan their weekly lessons for the girls at Project Crayons.

Links:

• Aparna Makes International News as a Sex Educator!