Recipient Institution:
Center for Women's Development and Research

5/359 Annai Indiar NagarOkkiyampet, Thuraipakkam
Chennai - 600096 India

Tel/Fax: 91-44-24482821, 24963621

Email: balar@eth.net

Project Leader:
Ms. K.R. Renuka

Amount and Duration: US$ 8,911 / 12 months

Commencement Date:
June 2004

Project Proposal
Centre for Women's Development and Research
Project Proposal
ICT enabled Life skill and Sexuality Education for Adolescent girls

1. Project Background and Justification
About one-fifth of India's population is in the adolescent age group of 10-19 years. However, despite adolescents being a huge segment of the population, policies and programs in India have focused very little effort on the adolescent group. Unfortunately, the special needs of adolescents are rarely addressed by the educational, health, and family welfare programs in India. Adolescence is shrouded in myths and misconceptions about sexual health and sexuality. In Indian culture, talking about sex is taboo. Consequently, little information is provided to adolescents about sexual health. Instead, young people learn more about sexual and reproductive health from uninformed sources, which results in the perpetuation of myths and misconceptions about puberty, menstruation. During the transition to adulthood, lack of knowledge and awareness about reproductive organs, physiological changes, or sexuality can promote psychosocial stress. This is particularly so for girls, who also face gender discrimination. In India, one-half of all young women are thought to be sexually active by the time they are 18, and almost one in five are sexually active by the time they are 15. There are approximately 10 million pregnant adolescents and adolescent mothers throughout India at any given time.

Sexuality and power are at the root of most sexual and reproductive health problems. Good health therefore depends in part on having the personal power to negotiate effectively with others not only within intimate relationships but within the institutions of society as a whole. To manage their sexual and reproductive lives, people must be able to decide consciously whether, when, and with whom to become sexually active; to avoid nonconsensual sex, sexual violence, and abuse; to plan pregnancies and have access to safe abortion; to avoid acquiring or transmitting sexually transmitted infections and HIV/AIDS; to know when they need preventive and curative services; to go through pregnancy and childbirth safely; and to bear and rear health children. All these actions require knowledge of one's own and one's partner's body; the ability to talk about sex and reproduction with one's partners and with others; an understanding of infections and diseases how to prevent them and how to recognize them; and ability to access health care. Actions also require the capacity to assert one's right to control one's body and the skills to ensure that one's needs are met and wishes and concerns are respected. Towards this direction Centre for Women's Development and Research-CWDR is planning to implement a project "ICT enabled life Skill and Sexuality Education for Adolescent Girls".
Centre for Women's Development and research - CWDR was initiated during November 1993, by three women Activists. All of them had been working with different NGOs. They realized that in India only 2% of the NGOs are run by women, most of the women's development programs are designed and implemented by women. So they felt a need for more women's organizations and initiated CWDR. We are a Registered Trust; we are also registered under the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act of Ministry of Home Affairs. We are also registered as a Charitable Trust with the Income Tax department and exempted income tax. . At present we are working in 60 slums, covering nearly 35,000 families, the area is situated in the southern periphery of Chennai City. We are also working in 10 villages of Kancheepuram and Thiruvannamalai districts. We serve as a support service organization for other NGOs, particularly in Women's Human Rights. We have initiated local level women's organizations in our working areas and all our programmes are implemented through them. Now we are organizing the women domestic workers as a Trade Union. We are a committee member of "Tamilnadu Women's Movement" a state level network of NGOs and activists. We are also a founder member of "Tamilnadu Primary School Improvement Campaign" a state level network of NGOs, schoolteachers and Panchayath Presidents. We are in the process of introducing ICT in all our activities.
We know that it is the socio-economic and cultural reasons which create the problems for girl children and just using ICT will not solve these issues. But ICT as an information tool as a catalyst has lot of potential to educate and motivate these girls come together to solve their issues and grow as an empowered women. We wish to create two Information centres, one in village and one in city. 50% of time will be allotted only for girls and women and another 50% of the time will be allotted for commercial services to the community that is the community members have to pay to use the centre. The income raised will help the sustainability of the centre. The only girls and women time will provide the needed privacy for girls to learn about sexuality particularly the reproductive health aspects. One of the major problem we faced in the problem was getting the right person for sexuality education in rural areas, most of them from cities do not want to spent more time on traveling to reach the villages, these ICT centers will solve this problem, the resource person have discuss with the girls through internet, phone.
In addition to the sexuality education they will also learn core life skills like the ability to Make decisions, solve problems and think critically and creatively. Clarify and analyze values, Communicate, including listen, build empathy, be assertive and negotiate. Cope with emotion and stress, Feel empathy with others and be self-aware. Using ICT to teach these things will be a challenge for us and this will explore different possibilities. In addition to Puberty most of the girl children drop out of schools because of English, Mathematics in 8th standard, ICT can help them to improve their performance in these subjects and hence continue their education. Through internet and other information they will be exposed to different career options available to them and plan accordingly. As part of the project we will also develop WebPages, CDs in local language Tamil to educate the girls. In future it will help Tamil girls.
Initially we are planning to prepare a family profile and village profile using digital camera and computer, that will be done by the girls club, the information can used for many purposes in future. We also understand that technology alone cannot solve the problem so regular discussions, weekend workshops will be organized to educate the adolescent girls.
2. Project objectives
The aim of the project is to design, test and implement an ICT based life skill and sexuality education targeting adolescent girls from rural and urban areas. Based on this experience expand the network further.

The objectives of the project are:

• To provide life skill and sexuality education by using ICT for 200 adolescent girl children of Othiyur village and Thiruvanmiyur slum area
• Design a ICT based information dissemination system that can used among rural and urban adolescent girls
• Train 50 adolescent girls in using computer, internet and digital camera
• Create a family profile and area profile of Othiyur village and Thiruvanmiyur slum area, using ICT, by involving the adolescent girls
• To create an awareness among adolescent girls and the community about the potential of ICT to change their lives.
• Initiate and strengthen adolescent girl children's clubs "Snaehidhi" in the target and in future build a network of adolescent girl children's clubs using ICT
• Develop a Tamil language web-site or multimedia CD to educate adolescent girls about sexuality
• To educate and motivate adolescent girl children to mobilize their collective potential to solve their issues.
• To find about the usage and impact of ICT among rural and urban adolescent girls.
• To provide supplementary education classes through ICT for 50-100 girls studying high school to enhance their performance in their classes.

3. Project beneficiaries
Dalit Adolescent girls from Othiyur village of Eddaikazhinadu town Panchayath, Kancheepuram district and Adolescent girls from slums of Thiruvanmiyur. Both school going and working adolescent girl children will benefit from this project.
4. Project methodology
Since this is a new attempt and sexuality education for adolescent girls is a sensitive issue, we will be using participatory methodology, that is the adolescent girls and the community will participate in the planning and implementation of the project.
This will be a pilot research project to find out the possibilities of ICT in educating the adolescent girls and also the differences in using the ICT among rural and urban girls.
Initially we will be organizing community level meetings and meetings of adolescent girls to create awareness about the potential of ICT in education and community development. Then we will select a group of adolescent girls both school going and working and train them in using ICT- Computer, internet, digital cameras. They will prepare the profiles of adolescent girls and also family profiles and by using these profiles the village and slum area profiles. The whole process will help the adolescent girls come together and form "Snaehidi" adolescent girl children's clubs that would also strengthen their skill in using ICT. In future the family profiles can be upgraded as family pages, the village profile can be used as a web page of the village. The profiles will be used in planning the future of adolescent girls, families and village/slum. Then with their participation we will develop education materials for sexuality education in Tamil, we will also develop a website or CD based interactive learning material. The Snaehidi members will manage the centre they will also provide services like DTP, Internet, Email, Computer training, tuition classes, E-commerce to earn income to run the centre, one or two girls will get employment in these centres. We will also organize video conferences, chats to educate girls and also develop and design a cost effective ICT methodology. In addition to video conferences we will also organize exposure visits of city girls visiting the village and the village girls visiting the city. By using the internet they can learn about the different careers available to them. By using the CD and internet they can improve their academic skills in difficult subjects like English, Mathematics.
As mentioned earlier we fully realize that technology alone cannot bring change so we will be organizing regular meetings, weekend workshops to educate the girls and reinforce their learning. They will also network with other adolescent girls organizations available on the net.
The major activities we will be implementing are:
1. Community level Meetings
2. ICT training for 50 adolescent girls
3. Preparation of individual, family and village/slum profiles
4. Educating the adolescent girls using ICT
5. Initiating and strengthening the adolescent girls clubs "Snaehidi"
6. Providing commercial ICT service to the community
7. Developing website, CD based learning material
8. Monitoring, evaluation and reporting

5. Timeline

6. Project outputs

• Family and village/slum area profiles
• Report of the findings on the use and impact of ICT by rural and urban adolescent girls
• Web and computer based learning materials on life skill and sexuality education
• Adolescent girls clubs "Snaehidi",
• Team of adolescent girls trained in ICT skills managing the Information centres
• A network of volunteers, NGOs, Institutes concerned about adolescent girl children's

Education.

• Communities aware of the potential of ICT and using it for their development.

7. Project monitoring:
Project monitoring will be done by our staff and adolescent girl club members once in a month in their review meetings. Towards the end of the year we will conduct an evaluation of the project. With the help of an outsider we will develop the indicators and process.
Some of the indicators we are thinking now are:

• Number of girl children trained in ICT skills
• The quality of profiles produced
• Functioning of adolescent girl children's clubs
• The quantity and quality of materials produced
• Number of people using the information centre
• Girl children's awareness level on sexuality
• Communities awareness of ICT, adolescent girl children's education
• Career planning of adolescent girls, their achievement in formal schools
• Network created

8. Project sustainability:
Ultimately our idea is to build a self-sustaining network of Women NGOs, using ICT for women's and girl children's empowerment. So we will be working on this for few more years that is we do not leave after one year, we are already implementing other projects in these areas.

Because of their work or study Adolescent girls cannot use the infra-structure created that is the information centre all the 24 hours and we also want the community to benefit from ICT. So tentatively 50% of the time will be used exclusively for adolescent girls, other 50% will be given for community usage. But the community members have to pay some money to use the centre. The centre will be managed by one or two adolescent girls. Othiyur village has only 350 families, we are also planning to cover only 300-350 families in the slum. That small population using the centre may not able to create enough money to sustain the centre so later.