Nirantar has worked with different organisations to help them develop educational material including curriculum frameworks. Between 1994 and 1997 Nirantar collaborated with the Mahila Samakhya or Education for Women’s Equality (a national-level government programme for women’s empowerment) in Uttar Pradesh to develop a residential education programme for rural women.

We worked with the local Mahila Samakhya team in Banda, teachers and learners to develop a curriculum based on the following principles:

Learner-centered - Creating curricula that was responsive to the lifeworld of the learner, respecting the experience the learner had already acquired.
Holistic - Based on the premise that the learner's perception of her world is holistic and that adult learning is neither a compartmentalised nor linear process.
Feminist - Integration of a gender perspective in all content areas, making visible the social, economic and cultural experiences of women. In the teaching methodology this implied a non-hierarchical, non-judgemental approach.

The curriculum was developed around the themes of land, water, forest, health and society. Issues of gender, caste and class were interwoven into these themes. To read an excerpt click here or read Windows to the World.

Drawing on our experiences of developing a curriculum for the Mahila Samakhya Mahila Shikshan Kendra, Nirantar has formulated a new curriculum for Janishala, the residential centre for adolescent girls in Lalitpur. Click here to read more about this curriculum.