In March 2016, with the support of the South Asia Women’s Fund, the Prakriye field centre of IT for Change started working with 85 adolescent girls in the age group of 12-17 years, with the objective of strengthening their agency, autonomy and leadership through an innovative, 12 month long, capacity building project ‘Dhwanigalu’. In 2017, the team worked with an additional 102 adolescent girls and focused on honing their digital literacy skills.
The attempt has been to design and implement a training module that effectively combines traditional and technology-mediated learning methodologies – such as digital story telling, photo-essays, role-plays, simulation exercises and debates.
The guiding rationale of the project is that in a context where the socialisation of girls has traditionally focused on enforcing their deference to authority figures in the prevailing gender order, it is important to enable them reclaim their thwarted leadership potential through an effective ‘education-for-empowerment’ process.
The specific topics that the trainings focus on are:
- Women’s rights and the law
- Understanding gender roles
- Mobility and participation in public life
- Asserting leadership in private and public domains
- Determining one’s life-course/ Self-determination
In August 2016, the Prakriye field centre entered into a 4 month collaboration with the Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology to jointly explore and develop new pedagogies and creative resource material to strengthen the learning dialogues with adolescent girls. 15 students in the 7th semester of the Bachelors’ Course in Information Arts and Information Design Practices, under the guidance of faculty member, Catalina Alzate were involved in this collaboration.
This blog captures the reflections of all the participants involved in this process – the team members of Prakriye, the adolescent girls, the Srishti students – and also share the key outputs and resource material produced.
The Dhwanigalu Network
