A six-day course for frontline workers in civil society organisations working with adolescent girls. Designed to build knowledge, understanding, and facilitation skills on gender, adolescence, rights, and the process of collectivisation, enabling participants to effectively support and strengthen adolescent girls’ collectives.

Adolescent girls (ages 11 – 19) are in a critical stage of transition marked by physical, social, and psychological changes. During this period, support for their education, health, nutrition, safety, and agency is essential to help them realise their potential. India has nearly 12 crore adolescent girls, about 10 percent of its population.

The experience the Foundation’s grant partners show that forming adolescent girls’ collectives, creating safe learning spaces, and developing peer leaders, leads to meaningful and lasting change. This process requires skilled facilitators from Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) who can engage girls on issues such as adolescence, gender, sexuality, rights, and leadership while mobilising and supporting them.

Why this course?

Small, early-stage CSOs in rural and urban underserved areas lack access to affordable, high-quality, local-language capacity-building opportunities. This practice-oriented training course draws on extensive consultations with experts and field practitioners.

Developed and offered jointly by the University and Philanthropy team addresses capacity building needs of frontline facilitators in partner CSOs to enhance the quality of their programmes. 

The course is aimed at strengthening participants’ understanding and perspectives on adolescence, gender equality and rights. It builds skills for effective facilitation and practical processes for nurturing adolescent girls’ collectives. The course includes field-exposure and interaction with successful girl-led collectives in Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, West Bengal and Karnataka.

The course is intended for frontline CSO functionaries directly responsible for mobilising and strengthening adolescent girls’ collectives. It brings together participants from diverse backgrounds familiar with their local communities and have basic knowledge of gender and adolescent issues but require deeper conceptual understanding and practical skills to effectively support girls, families, and community stakeholders.

What does the course offer?

This course will enable participants to:

• Develop perspectives on adolescence, gender, sexuality and collectivisation to effectively engage with adolescent girls’ collectives.
• Explain the concepts of agency, mobility, equal opportunity, and gender-based violence in reference to adolescent girls.
• Engage with the principles of facilitation involved in sessions and discussions with adolescent girls.
• Create actionable plans for collectivisation and facilitation of discussions with adolescent girls to build safe, inclusive, and participatory learning spaces.

Pedagogy

The course is based on experiential learning principles and uses a participatory learning methodology that places participants’ experiences at the centre of the learning process. It builds on participants’ existing knowledge and skills, promotes active participation, and encourages collective learning through dialogue and reflection. Through this approach, participants develop practical insights and strengthen their ability to apply the learning effectively in their work with adolescent girls’ collectives.

Medium of instruction – Hindi