Our uniquely designed Personality Development course helps girls to overcome traditional constraints that keep them shackled to age-old traditions. The thrust of our program is to enable girls to enter domains hitherto denied to them.
Our unique Program Modules develop women’s leadership capabilities and expose them to aspects of negotiating public life, through visits to the local police station, for instance. Some core topics are awareness about the Constitution, of the rights and values it upholds, health concerns and understanding gender. These modules, combined with our Education programs, have greatly aided the young women in finding gainful employment in arenas traditionally seen as male domains.
Women’s employment, in our context, includes encouraging our participants to stand on their own feet by resisting the common social pressure to marry and have children at an early age. Our program enables both, young women who managed to resist such pressures as well as those who could not, to resume their education so that they do not lag behind when seeking employment later.
Football has proven useful to not only to incorporate life skills in the girls but also to encourage them to attend school and complete their education.
FOOTBALL
Since two years we have used sports to connect with and guide the girls. Sports in general but football, in particular, have become a phenomenon that has huge potentials as channels and tools for social development.
“I have been called all kinds of names for playing this ‘manly sport,’ but the way football has liberated me is incomprehensible. Just last year, Mumbra got its women’s-only football ground,”
Sabah, Football Coach
RESIDENTIAL
The aim of this workshop is to create space where all women who are struggling with violence and gender based inequalities and discrimination in their lives can be brought together to share their own unique problems and issues. This discussion tries to break down the image of women as helpless and weaker individuals and imbibe in them values like self-reliance, independence, dignity and equal rights in society. This socializing also provides an opportunity for these women to get out of their homes and feel free to think about starting a life afresh.
Through ‘Sculpting Lives’ project, women got an opportunity to travel out of their hometowns and gain perspective on issues of women’s rights and domestic violence and how it manifests differently in different contexts.
PHOTOGRAPHY
Aawaaz-e-Niswaan, in collaboration with Point of View, conducted a photography workshop called ‘Sculpting Lives’ with 16 Muslim women, many of whom were survivors of domestic violence. The objective of this workshop, which was led by the members Photography Promotion Trust, was to challenge the stereotypical representation of the Muslim women as weak , helpless, and destitute and gave them a novel medium to tell their stories in their own way.
PARVAAZ
Parvaaz is our annual culture event that encourages adolescent girls and women to engage in self expression through creative means like plays, poetry, dance and so on. The objective of this event is to foster self confidence and creativity amongst the girls and women of the community and extend a message of courage and gender equality. Parvaaz gives members of the community a much-needed platform to rediscover themselves and realise their full potential in various extra-circular avenues and encourage others to do so.