Support A Young Girls Leadership Academy in India

2025 marks the 10th year of SELF Academy, CREA’s flagship programme that builds and strengthens young women’s leadership from rural Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, and Jharkhand. Over the years, this residential Academy has empowered more than 350 adolescent girls and young women on gender, sexuality, consent, bodily autonomy, pleasure, and sexual and reproductive health and rights through a rights-based approach. Using sports, storytelling, and participatory methods, the Academy helped participants develop leadership skills, amplify their voices, explore their inner worlds, understand emotions and desires, connect with others’ needs, and, through experiential learning, reflect on beliefs while challenging social norms and gender-based violence. The 2025 Academy, held in Delhi from 1–10 June, brought together 32 young women aged 18–24. Combining feminist reflection with English and computer training, the sessions on gender, power, consent, and storytelling nurtured confidence, critical thinking, and transformative leadership. Below given is an overview of session highlights and participants’ key learnings.

Learning, expressing, and creating: English & Computers: Participants built skills and confidence through English and computer sessions, learning to form sentences, express ideas, and navigate MS Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and Gmail. For many, it was their first hands-on experience with computers, marking a step toward claiming digital spaces. They led presentations, debated, and translated ideas, gaining self-belief. Participants reflected: “Earlier, I was scared to even touch the mouse. Now I can make my own presentation.” “I was afraid to speak in English, but now I can express myself freely.” Facilitators highlighted that this growth stemmed from curiosity, patience, and self-belief, not just technical skills.

Exploring gender, sexuality, and patriarchy: CREA facilitators used body mapping to explore gender and sexuality, where participants reflected the struggles of girls and gender-diverse people, by giving the sketch a name, story and identity. Discussions highlighted how patriarchy shapes bodies, decisions, and desires, and confines people to rigid categories, excluding intersex and transgender individuals. Participants reflected on everyday power dynamics, shared personal acts of resistance - like speaking up against societal and familial pressures, rejecting early marriage, and realized personal experiences are political. The session emphasized on the importance of voice, agency and that collective resistance fosters social change and new possibilities for freedom.

Unlearning gender, sexuality, and family norms: Facilitated by the Nazariya Foundation, the participatory and engaging sessions encouraged participants to question societal norms around family, love, sex, and relationships, and examine how these norms shape their own beliefs, shaping their idea of ‘normal’. Activities, like drawing family photos, showed the exclusion of transgender people, persons with disabilities, and chosen families, prompting the realization: “We often criticize society for being narrow-minded, but the same norms live inside us too.” Through case studies and discussions on gender, sexuality, caste, class, and religion, participants examined how women’s independence is subtly undermined, how heterosexuality is normalized, and same sex love is devalued. These exercises explored intersectionality, challenged rigid categories, and learned how multiple identities overlap to create privilege or discrimination. Facilitators emphasized: “Change begins with acknowledging our own discomfort.” Participants were able to recognize that real inclusion begins not by “tolerating difference” but by creating inclusive spaces. 

Sexual and Reproductive Health (SRHR), bodily autonomy, and justice: Adsa from Sama Resource Group for Women and Health led a session on SRHR and bodily autonomy, topics often silenced in daily life. The session challenged myths about disability and womanhood, exploring how patriarchy shapes health, emotions, and access to care, including judgment from providers or restrictions on abortion. The conversation extended to sex, desire, and contraception, clarifying myths and emphasizing that pleasure, consent, and choice are integral to SRHR. Reproductive justice was explored through real-life stories showing how early marriage, social control, and caste-based discrimination limit freedom and health. They critically examined societal double standards policing women’s sexuality and left empowered with knowledge, agency, and the motivation to challenge norms and support women’s rights in their communities.The session made it clear that SRHR is not merely a medical issue, it is about justice, dignity, and rights, and it belongs to every woman.

Consent, pleasure, and gender-based violence: Facilitated by Apeksha and Mohini, independent consultants from Bangalore, the sessions included movement, games, and interactive reflective activities  which helped the participants understand consent, power, desires, and societal control over their bodies and choices. Stretching and breathing exercises connected the girls to their emotions, while interactive games explored choice, boundaries, and power dynamics. Creative activities like Sculptor and Clay and Mask-Unmask examined stereotypes, social norms, around the “good” and “bad” girl and the gap between inner desires and external expectations. The facilitators emphasized that consent begins with self-awareness and the ability to say yes or no freely. Participants recognized how social pressure can coerce consent, and how reclaiming agency can shift power imbalances. By asserting themselves and challenging norms, they connected personal experiences to societal structures, gaining awareness, courage, and inner strength.

Trust, respect, and relationships: The three-day session, facilitated by Tejinder Bhogal, a development consultant used movement, games, and reflection to help participants explore emotions, needs, and interpersonal dynamics. They examined feelings like sadness, pride, guilt, jealousy, and anger, understanding  how each emotion has value and and how social norms shape their expression. Activities such as personal scenario exercises and the “onion model” connected visible behaviors to underlying thoughts and unmet needs, realizing that emotions often signal what we require for growth and connection.The session emphasized collaboration, leadership, and attentive listening. Exercises in interviewing and active listening demonstrated that genuine engagement listening, questioning, and reflecting creates space for mutual understanding and change. By the end, participants gained self-awareness, learned to honor their emotions, and understood how trust, respect, empathy and reflection  can strengthen relationships and leadership.  

Feminist storytelling: The final session, led by Chambal Media, introduced participants to feminist storytelling, as a tool for advocacy and self - expression. They examined how the media silences women’s voices, realizing that every story reflects who tells it and whose experiences are excluded. Through exercises participants were introduced to three pillars of feminist storytelling - voice, agency and intersectionality.  Using the tree metaphor, and applying the practical storytelling skills, learning 5Ws and 1H method participants learned to identify bias, structure narratives, and use respectful language to center marginalized voices. When asked, “If you had space on a newspaper’s front page, what would you write?” participants responded with stories on child marriage, gender discrimination, friendship, and poverty. They connected personal experiences to broader inequalities, explored emotions and relationships, and gained confidence, self-awareness, and leadership skills to challenge social norms and use storytelling for advocacy and change.

The Academy impact: The Academy nurtured self-discovery, critical thinking, and leadership. Participants built skills in English, digital literacy, feminist reflection, SRHR, consent, and storytelling. By connecting personal experiences with broader societal structures, they developed courage, curiosity, and a sense of agency, preparing them to challenge norms, assert their rights, and drive meaningful social change.

Over the past decade, the SELF Academy has expanded across regions and adapted to address the new issues that young women and girls face. In partnership with Akili Dada and Femme Forte, we launched the very first SELF Academy in East Africa in 2022, hosted in Uganda, followed by a second cohort in 2023. In 2024, CREA delivered the second East African iteration of the academy in Rwanda, in partnership with Hope for Single Mothers, the Rwanda National Association of Deaf Women, and Afro Ark. 

25 young women, including seven who were deaf and eight with significant physical disabilities, came together in a 15-day residential leadership and rights-based programme, conducted in the vernacular language of Kinyarwanda. We worked with three sign language interpreters, who stayed on-site throughout, and the content was adapted for accessibility with closed captions on visual media, image descriptions, and screen-reader-friendly formats. The venue was also equipped to support the participants' mobility needs.

“What I have learned at SELF has given me strength, and I will share it with others and live by it in my life.”

The participants reported that the sessions on gender, sexuality, disability rights, and SRHR opened up conversations that many were having for the first time. Forty per cent of the participants reported a significant increase in their knowledge of disability rights, while the remaining 60% reported a substantial increase. For many, it was their first time learning alongside girls with such a wide range of disability experiences. Most described a shift in how they viewed disability, both their own and others’.

While CREA has always created accessible spaces, being intentional about it requires cost, effort, and the right partnerships. The Rwanda edition of SELF was able to focus on deaf girls and women in part due to strong partnerships with disability-rights organisations.. These experiences will not only enrich the 2025 SELF Academy in East Africa but also future SELF Academies in India, and we look forward to sharing with you what that will look like!