A Design For Change Project at Abhyudaya Nagar Mumbai Public School

By Aida Ali and Smriti Parikh

GROWING WITH CONFIDENCE

At Abhyudaya Nagar MPS in Parel, we observed the community of most of the students and realized the need for sexual awareness and empowerment.

The community is rife with violence and abuse, especially child abuse, of various kinds.

Over the course of a month, as we interacted with the students, we observed a need to increase their awareness of their own bodies and minds.

FEEL

When the need was directly communicated by the students in classroom meetings and private conversations, in the form of questions and concerns, we decided to address the need as a Design For Change project.

We observed our students, especially those from grades 5, 6 and 7.

We set out with an idea entitled “Growing with Confidence” as a Design For Change project in the 5th grade this academic year.

After extensive research and consulting several 5th grade sex education curriculums from around the world, we designed our plans and started our sessions with the students, aged 8-12 years.

VISION

We determined that in order for us to achieve our vision of empowering children all across the community, we needed the project to be long term.

Our vision acknowledges the need for this across different grades and will, thus, conclude with the 5th graders passing on the torch themselves by having conversations with their siblings, friends and most importantly, by conducting their own sessions with the 4th graders at the end of the year.

We began by dividing the students of 5th grade, 50 of them, into 4 groups – 2 of girls and 2 of boys. Group A roughly consists of girls aged 11-12 and Group B of girls aged 8-10. The boys were similarly divided into groups.

After initial few sessions conducted with the class as a whole, we conducted group wise reflection sessions wherein we had conversations about the changes in our feelings because of hormones and the changes in our bodies. The discussions were student led, with the teacher acting as a moderator.

DO

Picture: Eyes closed reflection time

Picture: Adnan raising his hand to talk about “What makes you feel powerful.”

STUDENT REFLECTIONS

We hope to keep this project going through effective

student leadership for years to come.

LOOKING AHEAH