Strengthening Adolescent Girls with Sex Education

Kolkata Sanved conducted three sessions with 30 care providers and 20 adolescent girls in different locations of West Bengal with the collaboration of two partner organizations. The participants were adolescent girls, staff, mentors, and care-providers between the age bracket of 14 and 40 years. All the adolescent participants belong to the economically deprived community of remote rural areas of South 24 Parganas and the care-providers look after the field area of different remote places of South 24 Parganas, North 24 Parganas, Nadia and Kolkata. In both the cases the partner organizations assessed that the stakeholders of their communities often face various types of gender-based violence and are more prone to become prey due to lack of knowledge about basic rights, especially sexual reproductive health rights. As sexual and reproductive health is not only about physical wellbeing – it includes the right to healthy and respectful relationships, health services that are inclusive, safe and appropriate, access to accurate information, effective and affordable methods of contraception and access to timely support.

After taking them through the SRHR sessions, participants were able to identify the gender-based stereotypes and restrictions that they have to face at home and in society, especially adolescent girls. They were also quite interested in learning about DMT in detail. Topics related to body awareness, body mapping, sex, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation and expression, and gender stressors at present and across lifespan were discussed in the three-day session. Participants also learned about rapport-building and confidence-building.