Providing Education & Training to Women in India

Dear supporters,

In the whirlwind of programmes and on-going projects it’s always nice to be able to share with you some of the highlights. In August 2017 a team of 14 ran a 6 week programme focused around; Sex, Gender and Consent for 60 boys and 20 girls at local high schools in Pallaruthy and Mundamveli. The workshops sought to build up pupils’ knowledge of the differences between Sex and Gender, issues of Gender equality and awareness of safe sexual behaviour for themselves and others.

Through group discussion, engaging activities and the creation of informative posters, students were able to demonstrate their learning and develop their own ideas about the topics we covered. At present, teaching Sex education to students in Keralan schools is not compulsory. Though there has been talk from school boards about the idea of introducing a Sex Education curriculum for the last 10 years, until now there has been little to no evidential progress. After a recent workshop we supported, that was initiated by local non-profit Child Advocacy Centre Dil Se, in which 20 children from local schools in Std 8-12 openly discussed how, when and If they would like to learn about topics surrounding Sexuality, Gender, Sexual Abuse and LGBTQIA. It was clear from this workshop that pupils would overall feel more comfortable learning about these issues from an adult who was not related to their school or home life.

While Kerala remains a highly traditional state that views sex as something reserved for marriage, there are those who welcome progress in the education of these topics. On a discussion board titled ‘Need for healthy attitude towards sex education’ listed on the Kochi Hindu times webpage, Dr Biju Poulose writes: “Children need to learn to be comfortable with their own changing sexuality and develop a healthy respect for those of the opposite sex” As a response to this research and evidence we decided to initiate introductory classes for Boys and Girls in Standard's 8 & 9 at local secondary schools. The classes were to talk about sex, gender and consent in an open, clear and honest way.

We have been working with St Louis Primary school for over 2 years and during this time have become familiar with St Louis Secondary school, just a few feet away. Since the target age group for these workshops was 11-18 Years old we decided to reach out to St Louis Secondary to offer this classes. Simultaneously we also began a partnership with SDPY Boys Higher Secondary School in Pallaruthy, a school whose teaching staff reached out with interest in our current programmes.

Both schools are Independent schools receiving minimal government support, meaning fees for pupils are low and many of their students come from working class, lower income backgrounds. In the case of both schools teachers were asked to select 50 students who were excelling in English and who would therefore be more able to access the subject material during the workshops. In St Louis, a mixed gender school, 25 girls and 25 boys were chosen and taught separately as per our research into how the students would prefer to tackle these topics.

Over the course of 6 weeks we were able to work through the curriculum guidelines to create a course of material that taught students about Sex and Gender, Consent, Personal Boundaries, Online Safety and much more. These classes were delivered in an activity centric, interactive and engaging way and included; videos, games, trust exercises, poster
creation and team bonding activities.

The impact of these sessions were clear in the work produced by the students and their ability to recall their learnings in an end of topic quiz. Students of both genders were able to confidently; list biological differences between men and women, label diagrams of male and female bodies, explain the term ‘gender’ and pledge to keep themselves and others safe and free from unsafe sexual behaviour. The feedback given by students, teachers and parents was overwhelmingly positive and during the end of programme celebration one parent was able to give a speech in English explaining how the programme had provided ‘valuable life skills for teenagers’. Projects and activities like these are relying on external support and people willing to donate personal time, energy and resources. Thank you for your continued support of this project on behalf of our team but also the teams at the numerous schools and other
organisations we work with.

With Gratitude, 

GVI India