Partners

Sahjani Shiksha Kendra

Established in 2002 in Lalitpur, Bundelkhand in Uttar Pradesh as part of Nirantar Trust, Sahjani Shiksha Kendra was registered as a non-governmental organization in 2013. Their region of focus has a rigid, patriarchal social structure and SSK believes that empowering women and adolescent girls through literacy and education paves the way for social change. The organization believes that education is not only a means to literacy but a tool for personal transformation that can catalyse community-level transformation and change. Focused on women and adolescent girls from Dalit, Adivasi and other marginalized communities, SSK’s literacy and education programmes work across strategies such as adult functional literacy, resource centres, libraries, and collectives. Their empowerment program complements the literacy program by awareness building and seeking entitlements and rights across food security, Right to Work, Right to Education and personal and community safety. SSK’s programmes provide adolescent girls with training in computers and emerging technologies for self-expression as well as avenues for livelihood creation in the future. They also work with the police and justice delivery systems by identifying their key responsibilities and enforcing the rights of survivors of gender-based violence. Over and above their various programmes, SSK is also a training and resource centre with a single-minded focus on building women’s leadership capabilities and autonomy.

Nirantar and SSK began grassroot-level interventions in 2002, after research and discussions with other organizations working in Uttar Pradesh, identifying Lalitpur district as their geographical area of focus. While there was a lot of emphasis on children’s education, especially for girls, research found that education remained out of reach for most children, because of inaccessibility and discrimination along caste, class, geographical and gender lines. Community-based, contextual interventions were developed for adult literacy programs for women as well as education camps for young girls. Access to educational services in these communities were envisioned to challenge existing norms and boost overall community development, as well as to facilitate greater access, and a demand for, public services.

Project with MHI

SSK is implementing a project with MHI to provide psychosocial support and mental health awareness in the communities they work in for a one-year period. The project will incorporate mental health services through counselling services for individuals and groups, leveraging existing support groups for survivors of GBV, building awareness on mental health through street plays and community events, and advocacy with local administration to provide support to women who experience violence. This project will work at three levels: (1) Individual; (2) Group and (3) Community-village level, to provide psychosocial support, legal aid and training for women facing gender and caste-based violence; hold group meetings with adolescent girls’ and women’s collectives for perspective building and working with men, boys and local governments to build awareness on gender.

For more information, please visit: https://www.ssklalitpur.com