Empowerment
People become empowered when they develop a clear and evolving understanding of themselves, their rights and opportunities in the world around them through critical awareness and have the power to make choices for betterment of their lives and their world through increased agency, voice and participation.
Women Empowerment
At Learning Space Foundation, we strive for creating a world that is free of violence and discrimination, gender injustice and incorporate equality and respect for human rights. We conduct awareness programs on various types of violence that women may face, and the ways to protect themselves through self-defense workshops. We also support other areas of empowerment of women through skill development programs, supporting education, livelihoods and holding safe and compassionate spaces for psychological wellbeing.
Adolescent Empowerment
Adolescence is a critical stage where adolescents go through identity crisis, gender pressure, discrimination, peer and societal pressure pose a barrier to make their decisions and affect the safe and healthy transition from childhood to adulthood. Knowledge, skills an various experiences acquired by the adolescents have an important role to play during adulthood. So, we strive to build their knowledge and enhance their skills so that they will have a smother transition from adolescence to adulthood. We work to reduce high-risk behaviors among adolescents, strengthen their resilience, develop fundamental life skills and leadership skills, help inculcate behaviors that lead to healthy choices and success in life.
OBJECTIVES
- Increasing social and psychological empowerment of adolescents
- Increasing social, economic, educational and psychological empowerment of women
Projects
Life skills and Self-leadership
These skills help adolescents navigate life successfully. We help adolescents and youth reach their full potential by teaching necessary life skills and self-leadership skills.
Gender Sensitization
We sensitize individuals towards existing gender inequalities with an aim to bring about attitudinal changes towards Gender
based violence.
A Rose that Grew from Concrete
Through this program, we provide a little encouragement to children who try to overcome hurdles and continue growing smarter and stronger.
Women Empowerment
We support girls & women with the knowledge, skills and self-confidence necessary to realize their full potential and participate fully in their lives.
Lifeskills and Self-leadership training
We wish to see each child emotionally balanced, self-aware, resilient and able to make informed choices in life. To realize this goal, we provide teens and youth with skills they may not learn about at home or in school/college, which include goal setting, resiliency, time management, confident communication, making informed choices etc. We also collaborate with other organizations to reach out to more adolescents and youth.
- For the second year in a row, we conducted leadership training for 60 youth girls from 9 communities in Secunderabad, in collaboration with APSA-PLAN for 6 months from Dec 2019 – Mar 2020.
- Conducted leadership training for 60 youth girls from 9 communities in Secunderabad, in collaboration with APSA-PLAN for 6 months from Dec 2018 – May 2019.
- A one-day workshop for 40 youth girls and boys on life skills, gender, human rights and current affairs in May 2019.
- Young Leadership Training sessions for ~1200 selected students from 24 Government high schools of Nampally and Khairatabad mandals in the academic year 2016-17.
- Leadership sessions for 40 students of class 8 in Government Upper Primary School, Gowlidoddi, in collaboration Move the Wheel Foundation.
Gender Sensitization
Parivartan: Empowering Adolescents for a Gender-Inclusive Future:
Violence against women and girls is a global pandemic that affects 1 in 3 women in their lifetime. We are conditioned for centuries by the patriarchal setup of our society to believe that men are superior to women. Until this societal attitude towards women is not challenged, women won’t be safe. We need sustainable and positive change in the societal perception. It means changing mindsets which is tougher and takes longer and must start from an early age. In collaboration with a US-based NGO Parivartan (click here to visit their web site), we are working towards this common goal by raising awareness and changing attitude of adolescents.
This is an ongoing project on which we have been working since the beginning of the academic year. We have been working with more than 5,000 children from 14 government schools in Rangareddy and Hyderabad districts. Our facilitators are tirelessly working to bring a positive change in these young minds and build a gender-equitable and just society.
For adults:
Gender stereotypes shape self-perception, attitudes to relationships and influence participation in the life’s choices. Home is the first place where children are socialized into gender norms, values and stereotypes. Home shapes how they should be treated, what opportunities they should receive or how they should behave according to dominant gender stereotypes in their society. Parents model their own beliefs about gender and pass on to their children. In a school environment, gender stereotypes can affect a young person’s classroom experience, academic performance, subject choice and well-being. So, it is very critical to sensitize adults. We at Learning Space, facilitate awareness programs and train the trainer programs for adults as well.
Here are a few programs we conducted:
- A 3-day training of trainers workshop for 50 participants from APSA and CAP Foundation.
- A one-day workshop on Gender Sensitization for 110 high school students of various government high schools as part of APSA Children Literacy Festival program.
- Gender sensitization for 120 girls of Government Girls High School, II Lancer,Golconda, 210 students of Government High School, Kothaguda, Hyderabad.
- Conducted Gender Sensitization Workshop for 50 students of Nallagutta [New] Government High School
- A one-day workshop on gender for 40 youth girls and boys on in collaboration with APSA.
A Rose that grew from concrete
Though the society has guidelines for what success looks like and comes from, there are people who prove it wrong by just simply learning to get through the hard times and getting past the hardships of where they come from. They never quit trying until they become what they want to. Through our ‘A Rose that grew from concrete’ program, we are trying to recognize and encourage those strong students, who are struggling to prove themselves against all odds. So far we felicitated
- 13 girls from 2 government schools in Oct 2019 as part of International Day of the Girl Child celebrations
- 55 girls and boys from 4 government schools in Nov 2019 during Children’s Day celebrations.
Women Empowerment
Empowerment enables women to realize their full identity and powers in all spheres of life. It is about their freedom of choice and action in all spheres – social, educational, economic, political and psychological. Though our country is making progress in a few other areas, the status of women still remains deplorable, oppressive and discriminatory. We at Learning Space Foundation trying our bit to support women in whichever way possible.
Social Empowerment
- As part of Sanghamitra training designed to uplift rural women and promote women empowerment by Rachakonda Security Councel (RKSC), we conducted an awareness session to 120 women volunteers from Bhongir, Ibrahimpatnam and Choutuppal on gender-based violence and child sexual abuse.
- Our founder Kaumudi Nagaraju being a Margadarshak and SAS program director Nalini Goteti being a Sanghamitra, both trained by Society for Cyberabad Security Council, are supporting and guiding women facing domestic violence.
- Founder of Learning Space Foundation is a mentor in GirlzFTW global community that aims to support and empower girls and women to question and dismantle harmful cultural norms through mentorship.
Economic Empowerment
- Financial Independence is a key factor for an Individual to sustain and grow in their lives. Learning Space Foundation supported skill development programmes initiated by Society for Rural Development Rainbow Home in Chudi Bazar Hyderabad in 2018. While SRD provided training in computer skills to 15 young women, our trainers conducted a series of sessions on setting goals, good communication, interview skills, and team work to help them fare better in the interviews as well as in their jobs.
- Provided a sewing machine to a single mother to support livelihood. She comes from a marginalized community and lost her husband in an accident.
- Our founder supported another NGO Prayaana as a mentor for their Comeback2Career programme which was designed to support women who are planning to restart their careers.
Educational Empowerment
- We support education of girls who are in need by paying their school/college fee and providing basic necessities such as notebooks. So far we supported 11 girls with their school and college fee.
- Covid pandemic pushed our education system go online which jeopardised education of many poor students. In our country where the gaps in access to education and the Internet were already vast, poor families are struggling to stay the course. Upon receiving request from RIGHTS, a Kerala based NGO that supports students with educational materials, we sponsored mobile phones to 2 Adivasi girls in Kerala, one girl from Thottekkadu Mattoor, Ernakulam, and another girl from Kokkallur PO, Calicut.
Psychological Empowerment
- Her Safe Space – This is a soft, compassionate, and supportive space of genuine connection and non-judgment for women. We made this as women-only space so that women get to express and explore themselves without the dominant lens of patriarchy. We hold this as a closed space on every Saturday with a limited number of women.
- We Hear You! – We along started this Instagram live series to focus on diverse topics related to teenagers. Each session is driven by the teenagers and all we provide is a judgement-free sharing space. We successfully conducted 8 sessions on various issues faced by teenagers. If you are teen and would like to talk to us, drop an email to info@learningspace.co.in
- We promote psychological wellbeing of women through various awareness sessions. So far we organized 6 sessions on topics such as emotional self-care, menstrual moods, mother’s mental health etc on different occasions.