Adolescent Development Program
SRC, Indore is one of the pioneer organizations in the country, which for the first time has been addressing the needs of adolescents in M.P. since 1993.
The program started with taking up 10 villages where schooling facility available was not beyond primary standard. The girls were mostly illiterate or school dropouts and had rarely been outside their villages. It is in this backdrop that we started working with adolescent girls and extended the program along with the girls and community and learning a lot in this process. The girls aged 12-20 were formed into Navyuvati Mandals. A local literate woman was identified and trained as instructor. Centers were started with batches of 30 girls in which they were provided Life Skills Education, literacy or Continuing Education and Vocational training over a period of 6 months, the centers were run in the evening for 2 hours every day as most of the girls were working as agricultural laborer and contributed to the family income, Life Skills Education sessions were taken twice a week in which the instructor was at times supported by the field staff. The girls were organised into forums called 'Navyuvti Mandals' which took up many community development activities such as removing liquor shop from the villages, motivating the parents to send their wards to schools, making the benefit of governments schemes available to the people, generating awareness about women’s reproductive health issues etc…
Residential training programmes for 4 months duration were also organised to train girls as peer educators. Gradually more and more villages and later slums and schools were also taken up and the program spread to many parts of Madhya Pradesh and Chhatisgarh.
From 1993-1998 SRC carried out direct field intervention programs for adolescents, adopting the ‘Empowerment Model’ Better Life Options & Opportunities Model (BLOOM) developed by CEDPA which includes Vocational Skills, Life Skills Education, Non Formal Education Program and advocating for girls at International, National, State and Community levels. To reach out to more and more number of adolescents, it entered into partnership with various GOs, NGOs & INGO’s and provided technical assistance. Needs of adolescent boys were also identified to promote gender equity & gender equality in the community.
Since 2000, technical assistance was provided to implement adolescent development programme in 5 IPD districts namely Rewa, Satna, Sidhi, Panna, Chattarpur supported by UNFPA. Local level NGOs were identified in these districts, their staff was trained as Master Trainers and grassroots level functionaries were provided intensive training as animators. Batches of 6 months duration on life skills education were run in villages with adolescent boys and girls by the animators. Technical backstopping throughout the programme duration was provided.
In a two-and-half year period since 2005, training on life skills education was provided to wardens, assistant wardens of KGBVs, Girls' Hostels and also to all the different levels of functionaries at district level involved in NPEGEL and SSA program such as DPCs, Gender Coordinators, Block Gender Coordinators, Block Resource Centre Coordinators and DIET personnel in order to build their capacities for promotion of adolescent development programs particularly with focus on building life skills among adolescents. The program was supported by UNICEF and Rajya Shiksha Kendra, Bhopal. Subsequently, RSK entrusted the responsibility of Capacity Building of Wardens and Assistant Wardens of KGBVs and Girls Hostels to SRC, Indore on all aspects related to Hostel Management and holistic development of girls residing in the hostels.
Till now, nearly 2 lakh adolescents have been provided with life skills education. Capacities of 123 NGOs/GOs of Madhya Pradesh and Chhatisgarh have been built to work with adolescents on life skills education. 494 Master Trainers have been trained out of which 278 are women. The trained persons are working with adolescent- in school and out of school, through school based programs, camps and long term intensive programs of 6 months duration for out of school adolescents in their respective areas. As part of technical assistance to these agencies, the organization provides training, and materials to the functionaries, establishes linkages with different development departments and health department, conducts regular monitoring and provides support to agencies from time to time as per need and conducts evaluation to see the impact of the program.