NIRANTAR - a centre for gender and education

About

Nirantar has since its inception been engaged with issues of sexuality, in particular through struggles for justice related to sexual violence against women, as part of the women’s movement. Nirantar has also been involved with Voices Against 377, a Delhi based coalition working against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. In 2007, Nirantar has begun working on the issue of sexuality as part of its mandate on education. The need for this initiative was based on a recognition of the linkages between sexuality and rights.

The sexuality education initiative has the following components -
- Creating materials on issues of sexuality in accessible Hindi for NGO members and other activists working at the community level

In the context of education, the category used most often is sex education, not sexuality education. At Nirantar we are working with the framework of sexuality. Somewhat difficult to define, sexuality refers to a range of experiences, thoughts, desires, beliefs, attitudes, values, behaviour, practices, roles and relationships. Sexuality is influenced by the interaction of biological, psychological, social, economic, political and cultural factors. Following from this, sexuality education is a process of acquiring information, building a critical understanding and forming attitudes about the self, relationships, sexual behavior, reproductive health and gender roles.

- Working with Community-based Programmes
This eight-month long programme )from December 2007-August 2008) ‘Yonikta aur Hum’ sought to build perspectives of staff members who are working at the level of the community. Nirantar provided substantive inputs to the organisations who participated in the programme. As a follow-up, the organisations conducted workshops, including with women in the community. For further details of this programme please see the section on Research, Advocacy and Training.

- Adolescence Education

Nirantar is working towards ensuring that adolescence education can be empowering for young people, particularly in term sof a positive approach to sexuality. Nirantar is designing and transacting a curriculum on the theme of 'the Body' as part of the larger curriculum of Janishala, the 8-month residential centre for Dalit and tribal girls as part of its programme in Lalitpur district of UP. This experience has shown us that a positive, open and empowering approach to adolescence education is desirable and possible. it has strenthened our advocacy efforts which are aimed at creating greater opportunities for empowering sexuality education for adolescents. these advocacy efforts assume importance in a context in which the approach to adolescence education is often fear-based, didactic and out of sync with the lived realities of adolescents. this has emerged from the reivew of existing adolecent education curricula undertaken by Nirantar. As part of efforts aimed at empowering adolescence education Niantar also conducts workshops with teachers and staff members of sexuality education.