Support A Young Girls Leadership Academy in India

“I trust someone who understands consent”

At CREA, each year, girls and young women from rural spaces/ villages of Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Jharkhand attend SELF Academy, where they learn new skills, build their capacity on gender and sexuality, at the same time, cultivate their leadership skills.

The residential workshop is designed in a fun and interactive format and guides girls to access and realise their agency and bodily autonomy by allowing them to engage with experts and feminist leaders on a myriad of exciting topics and complicated issues. One of the highlights of this year's workshop was a session around consent facilitated by Agents of Ishq.

Consent discussions played a central role in the workshop, helping young women cultivate safe and healthy dynamics within their romantic and sexual relationships. The Academy teaches young women to recognise that consent should be a continuous process and have a direct influence on building trust. 

Agents of Ishq have also recently published an article outlining direct quotations from the participants on how they understand and practice consent with their partners. These responses emerged from AOI's approach of using an unusual form of deep listening and co-creation in their consent workshops. The results were wide-ranging and multifaceted. 

“I trust someone who pampers me a little”

“I trust someone who has caring gestures”

“I trust someone who loves me not just by their heart but also with their brain”

“I trust someone who trusts me too”

The discussions around this topic showed that young women understood choice and consent as profoundly personal and gained a clear understanding of how violation of consent is a violation of their boundaries. Together they developed a checklist of trust sharing their expectations within their relationships

Links:

• Blogpost by Agents of Ishq on the workshop