Lifeskill,Sexuality Education for 1000 girls-India

Centre for Women’s Development and Research Life Skill and Sexuality Education for 1000 Girls (14480) Update- February 2014 Based on the learning from our past experience of providing life skill and sexuality education for adolescent girls we have made some changes for this new project, that comes under ‘Close the Divide’ Microsoft YouthSpeak. Earlier our focus was just to provide life skill and sexuality education to adolescent girls that are not given in the schools. Now we have also added supplementary education support along with life skill and sexuality education, because we wish to help these girls to become university graduates. This would help them to extend their marriage age, and also help them find good jobs with good salaries. If a girl fails in the high school usually parents think about her marriage, so the supplementary education would also help them to pass the high school examinations. In addition to that we are also providing sexuality education for adolescent boys, we believe that would help to change their attitude towards girls and help to reduce the violence against girls and women. India has the largest youth population, one third of the India’s total population of 1.237 billion are below 18 years. The future of India depends of this population, so this project is very important for us. We are providing life skill and sexuality education in our two recreational learning centres one in the village and the another one in the city centre. Regular weekend workshops were conducted in these centre. In addition to that in the city centre girls also come every day between 4 and 6 p.m to learn computer skills and spoken English. In the last 4 months 200 girls benefitted from these programmes. In addition to that we have been organizing sexuality education classes in the schools in our working area, nearly 300 girls, 280 boys and 54 school teachers benefitted from these programmes. Our field staff are also organizing regular monthly local meetings/trainings for adolescent girls to help them continue their learnings. We have organized two one week street theater and folk arts workshops and 42 girls participated in these workshops. During the workshop they developed plays regarding the elimination of violence against girls and women. During the 16 days campaign to eliminate violence against women they performed these plays in different villages and different public places in the city. This campaign was organized from 25th November the international day for the elimination of the violence against women to 10th December International human rights day. Nearly 15,000 people witnessed these plays and also participated in the discussions after the plays. It was a great learning experiences of the adolescent girls. During this period we could also raise Rs.75,000 locally and this money was distributed among 75 girls who are in high schools as motivational scholarships, all these girls are daughters of single women (widows and destitute women). We have also introduced educational DVDs to provide supplementary education support for 10th, 11th and 12th standard girls. They use it in our computer centres. In collaboration with iwid-Initiatives Women In Development we have organized two days workshop on model Women’s Parliament. 35 Snehidhi members 20 from the villages and 15 from the city area participated in that workshop. They learned about the functioning of parliament, policy making, budget, and women in parliament. This also helped them to learn about leadership skills. This also provided an opportunity for the city and village girls come together and learn from each other. In general the last 3 months were very active and useful period for us. Because the increasing incidents of violence against women and girls and media coverage, the mothers are also supporting our programme and encouraging girls to attend the life skill and sexuality education classes.