Envisioning Enlightened Adolescent Girls

Background

Saphara is a UK registered educational non-profit with a Christian ethos based in Northern Ireland. Saphara partnered with Change Alliance for three years from 2017-2020 to support it in delivery, monitoring and expansion of Saphara Girl Champion Programme. 

The main objective of the Girl Champions Programme is to enhance the performance of the partners on specific criteria set out by Saphara. The continuous engagement of Saphara with Change Alliance has strengthened the relation with each other and Change Alliance with its in-house expertise and experience have supported Saphara in expansion of the programme improved outcomes.

About the Project

Following are the activities wherein Saphara partnered with Change Alliance under its Girl Champions Programme:

  • Training of Master Trainers on adolescent girls’ life skills and health in the states of Jharkhand and Uttar Pradesh with the key objective to improve the performance of the Partners on specific criteria regarding the Saphara Girl Champions Programme
  • Monitoring and supervision of the programme delivered by civil society organisations to ensure that Master Trainers nominated by the civil society partners can train the facilitators effectively and enhance their capacity to further train adolescent girls in the age group of 11-16 years on life skill curriculum and health curriculum.  
  • The monitoring process also identifies gaps in the training methodology to ensure adequate measures are taken to improve the performance of trainers

Processes undertaken

The project had two components, first training of Master Trainers (MTs) so that they can train the facilitators in schools and community and in turn the adolescent girls of age group- 11 to 16 years get training on life skill and health curriculum. Generally, there were two trainings being organised in a year for Master Trainers each comprising of 4 days of participatory training wherein they also used to share their experience of these trainings in the school and community with facilitators and adolescent girls along with impact of the programme. 

While the second component was monitoring and supervisor of the programme which involved coordination, online meetings, handholding support and continuous follow up on timely and effective delivery of project with civil society partners. The monitoring visits of 3-4 days was also conducted by Change Alliance to monitor the quality of delivery and impact of programme on adolescent girls studying on schools and also in community.  

MTs regularly review the sessions before the student trainings and support the facilitators to prepare themselves to enable them to create positive impression with the children. MTs are aware that facilitators are in touch with the students and help them to take appropriate decisions at right time. Therefore, during the trainings they provide tips and guidance to facilitators on how to communicate and resolve issues of students with an open mind.  The health resilience module inculcates good health practices and food habits among the girls from the marginalized communities.

Major Findings

  • Over the last two years (2017-2019) under Girl Champions Programme of Saphara six Master Trainings conducted, wherein nine Master Trainers from 4 CSO partners and 24 facilitators were trained from Uttar Pradesh and Jharkhand (Bihar also covered through Caritas in second year of programme). Overall, through this programme 1439 girls from 15 formal schools were trained in two years. 
  • During 2019-2020, 1,434 adolescent girls from 11 formal schools in Jharkhand and two informal community schools in Bihar have been enrolled in this programme and out of 1,434 (includes cumulative figure, 473 new students enrolled) 98% of them which is 1,399 are attending sessions regularly