This week, a community engagement project in Bhandarjood and the Arthur Foot Academy's hinterland is seeing the light of day.
The village teachers, girls, panchayat, and schools are coming together to redefine what education can be for adolescent girls in their village. For official purposes, not disclosing the names of the organisations involved to implement this project. What we can reveal is what is coming ahead of us and what has come along so far.
This project will bring together adolescent girls to talk about their health, empathy, self-awareness, and critical thinking, and not just 'talk' but reimagine and redefine their village's responsibility to provide girls and women with a better standard of living. The truth is that these 'life-skills' are not taught in schools or at home.
So many girls spend their time trying to observe and assume by how adults behave around them to learn, but can we bring their voices to life? Can we make them feel safer asking these questions of their fellow village girls and women who face similar circumstances? Right now, the group has identified that this is important and needs to be thought about.
Stakeholders have had their first round of meetings. What is coming along in this project are art sessions, reading, training, and people coming together to dialogue and meet essential stakeholders of the village to move along with them. All of this is easy to write, but more difficult on the ground. But this is the journey we are going to embark on with some schools and community members. If not this, what is education? If not about taming the fear?
At Learning Forward Saturday, teachers discussed setting up shops in their classrooms to teach students language and mathematics. When children bring their everyday life experiences into school, they engage more, ask more, and actively participate in their own learning.
- Neelashi Mangal is our Training and Development Lead at Learning Forward India Foundation. Feel free to reach out to her, and we would love to have your support for our efforts to spread #JoyOfLearning, focusing on reading, reflection and building meaningful relationships #JoyOfGiving. Email her at NM@LearningFroward.org.in
- For more about us and how we work to support schools that help young people enage society, please visit the website www.SchoolEducation.com
