Building Capacity & Sensitizing Adolescent Girls in The Villages of Bharuch

India has the largest adolescent population in the world, 253 million, and every fifth person is between the ages of 10 to 19. These adolescents have immense potential to contribute to the social, economic, and cultural growth of India as a nation. However, adolescents, especially girls lack access to information on issues affecting their lives and have limited space to develop competencies crucial for change.

They are exposed to multiple layers of vulnerability due to pernicious social norms which in turn affects their ability to move freely and to make decisions affecting their work, education, marriage, and social relationships.

To tackle this, a collaborative program ‘Kishori Utkarsh Pahel’ is proposed by the Bharuch District Administration, supported by the DCM Shriram Foundation and implemented by BharatCares/ CSRBOX Foundation.. Kishori Utkarsh Pehal, an adolescent health awareness initiative, was initiated on the 12th of December 2022 in the Jhagadia Block of Bharuch District, Gujarat.

This initiative is a catalytic approach structured as an awareness and aspiration-building program among adolescent girls that aims to leverage the existing village, block, and district-level ecosystem of various government programs and seeks to bring synergy and coherence in addressing critical information and knowledge gaps for adolescent girls.

The program focuses on all adolescent girls comprising school-going girls, drop-outs, and out-of-school girls to ensure every girl who has been at a disadvantage to any socio-economic problem, gets an opportunity to be a part of this program.

Training and assessments

The 5-day training program for adolescents comprised six focus areas: Adolescent health, Menstrual health management, Nutrition, Knowledge and convergence of government schemes, Legal protection and rights of adolescent girls, and Leadership development.

For the first four days, the focus areas are explained through interactive and engaging lectures, videos, activities, and role-play games. When each module is completed a micro-assessment is conducted with Multiple Choice Questions.

This helps students recall and understand what they have learned. More than two-thirds of adolescent girls scored equal to more than 50% marks in the micro-assessment. And, on the last day, a macro assessment was conducted with an MCQ test covering all modules.

Ms Mittal Maharolji, the Master Trainer of Kishori Utkarsh Pahel said, ‘‘Kishori Utkarsh Pahel- initiative is a true blessing for adolescent girls there. The topics chosen were so helpful that Kishoris treat us as their friends today. Without hesitation, they share opinions on many topics and have helped us deal with common problems they face.”

In the first week of February 2023, the second phase of the program was launched across 64 villages in Bharuch, Gujarat.

Outreach and mobilization

To ensure the 122 villages of Bharuch benefit from the program, the program has been launched in multiple phases.

In December 2022, Phase 1 of outreach programs and training was initiated in 58 villages. BharatCares team spread the word about the Kishori Utkarsh Pahel through various mobilization campaigns. This included visiting schools, anganwadis, and interacting with the community by handing out pamphlets, and even driving around a van with infographics about the program.

First, a 4-day training was conducted for 95 teachers in the villages. The aim was to upskill existing staff to help disseminate knowledge to kishoris. They were trained on topics like menstrual health, nutrition, government schemes, life skills and more.

Then outreach campaigns were conducted to enroll adolescents. During these campaigns, the beneficiaries, including school-going girls, adolescents, and school dropouts, were made aware of the upcoming programs and their benefits.

To reach every household in each village the campaigns were carried out with the support of anganwadi workers and the Bharuch district administration.

‘Kishori Utkarsh Pahel’ is envisaged as an intervention for building the capacity of adolescent girls with a cascading model of education and awareness. Understanding this, 3285 girls signed up for the program from 58 villages. Out of this, 523 were school dropouts.

Building a cadre of empowered adolescents in Bharuch is a small beacon effort to achieve gender equality as girls are essential agents of change and their empowerment is key to breaking the cycle of poverty.