Pedagogies for empowering marginalized adolescent girls and young people: ‘from Self to citizenship’
To empower the rights perception of collectives of marginalized girls and young people and empower them with skills in social analysis and action, we have been experimenting with learning processes that highlight the appropriate pedagogies.
We believe we need pedadgogies that value and evoke the knowledge and experiences of marginalized communities and that of young people, that value and evoke their curiosity and stake for engagement with self and society and which are able to locate their experiences within a structural context of marginalization creating a strong collective inspiration for claiming rights and entitlements. All the processes engage the individual to towards deeper self-awareness while working in a safe space that nurtures the collective. The frame of learning has been ‘enquiry, analysis and action’.
All of the Youth work currently undertaken at Vishakha follows this framework.
Further, While developing a pedagogy for tribal girls and boys we decided to locate it in Body Politics. The body is central to the intersectional politics of social power, be it gender, sexuality, caste & identity, age or ability. The body is also the vessel for the individual to hold her self and social images, notions, emotions and perspectives. In that sense a deeper and comprehensive engagement with the body has become a plane for deep engagement with a scientific understanding, social construction, social control, disparity in access to resources and the need for support & services and state accountability. We have identified 4 core areas that shall be explored using this framework : 1) Labour, 2) sexuality 3) reproduction 4) Violence.
The Kamar Kathi and Poshan se barabari ki aur , Samvaad Or Humko kahani apne baat methodologies have been rooted in this understanding.