Strengthening Adolescent Girls’ leadership Capabilities

Training Curriculum (2016 – Ongoing)

Between March-August 2016, the Prakriye team worked with 85 girls in 4 villages of Hunsur block, Mysore district, establishing rapport and initiating conversations on gender norms, gender scripts, gender roles and the status of women and girls in the community. As a large number of participants had signed up, the training sessions were held in 8 sub-groups. 2 sub-groups were formed in each village: one for girls aged 12-14 years, and another for those in the 15-17 years age-group). The specific session plans and learning methodologies used are provided below. Click on the module title, to read more.

1. Rapport Session I: Photo Stories

2. Rapport Session II: Video as a Learning Resource

3. Module I: Understanding Gender Roles

4. Module II: What are my Rights?

5. Module III: Mobility and Participation in Public life

6. Module IV: Determining my Right to Self-determination

7. Module V: Sexual reproduction and Healthy relationship

Gathering Echoes

Gathering Echoes is a collaborative effort of students of Srishti Institute of Art Design and the Prakriye Team towards capacity building of adolescent girls by using elements of design in an empowerment discourse. These iterations have supported the Prakriye team in establishing community dialogues about gender equality, portraying images of women’s leadership in the public sphere and in strengthening the team’s efforts towards converting the aspirations of adolescents into actionable tools to pursue change.

Process journals from the projects that were conducted are included here:

Anushree Chokappa: Kishori as Captain

Leadership is something that Anushree has her interest in and her project aims at developing leadership qualities among the kishoris, through a series of interesting activities. Read more here.

Dipanshu Shrivastav: Where is my colour? – Self-expression Through Colours

The focus of this project is to develop play based pedagogies that encourage kishoris to express their views and opinions based on real life and fictional scenarios. Read more here.

Manjusha Muthiah: Let’s Speak Up- Advocacy for Empowerment

In her project Manjusha aims to develop a creative tool-kit for IT for Change through participatory research with the Kishoris with the intention of triggering processes that can help the girls carry forward dialogue with members of the community, about their place in society. Read more here.

Maria George: Flower Power

For Maria, it was always a mutual learning process, both for the kishoris and herself. Inspired by nature and her love for theatre, her project is a set of various activities that demonstrate the importance of observation and promote personal development and growth. Read more here.

Nyhna da Cunha: Understanding Menstruation

Nyhna, through her project, attempted to place menstruation in a larger social context along with the biological facts that she shared with the kishoris. The kishoris shared their problems and the myths associated with menstruation. Based on her conversations with the them, Nyhna got inspired to write a book on menstruation that would help young girls understand their bodies better. Read more here.

Nikhila Nanduri: Direct a show. Direct your life.

Nikhila stepped into the field with a perceptive attitude and kept her interventions very dynamic throughout her engagement with the kishoris. In her first visit to the village Attiguppe she tried to get an understanding of the lives of the kishoris by making them draw out their daily schedules. She discovered that most of them liked watching a TV soap called Nagini in the local language. This led her to design an activity in which they could use the characters of the serial to describe their own stories. This way it was intended for the kishoris to have control over existing narratives, to be able to express their own stories and to access a directorial role. Read more here.

Rhea Iyer: Dialogues on Gender

Through Rhea’ s association with the Prakriye field centre, she took the opportunity to explore issues on gender identity and the stereotypes associated with it. Through her activity she has attempted to bring out the kishoris’ personal connection to their gender and its influence on their day to day routines. Read more here.

Community Reporting

The kishoris of Mullur and Atiguppe villages were trained in Digital Story Telling (DST) to equip them with technical know how such as ideation, script writing, story board creation, voice recording and editing, etc.

After the training program the kishoris were given the assignment of creating their own DSTs, they took up topics such as learnings from Prakriye trainings, educational trip to Mysore, various kinds of crops grown in and around their village, and more. The digital stories are collected here.