Udaan with Girls
A 2 year long Fellowship Program to enable Tribal, Rural and Semi-Urban girls (Aged between 10 to 21) to lead social change in their villages by designing and implementing action projects in their communities
Our Values
Diversity
Diversified on the basis of gender, region, occasion, class, color, religion, access, culture among others, bringing together adolescent girls and women is the primary value of the UDAAN program. As well as creating opportunities to learn from each other together
Inclusion
Inclusion is a primary value under the UDAAN program, in which to infuse the "patriarchy" structure, especially for adolescents’ and women's leadership and full participation, to establish inclusion.
Gender Justice
For us, the term "gender justice" best reflects our intersectional approach that focuses on the diverse needs, experiences, and leadership of those most affected by discrimination and harassment.
Love
Love is judged in our context in many ways. The meaning of instilling the value of love in Udaan is to love oneself, to take responsibility for oneself. At the same time, giving importance to relationships means being responsibly involved in them.
Co-creation
Udaan is a co-creation process where each level strives to co-create. Creating co-creation, especially by establishing the ideas of marginalized peers and incorporating their skills and knowledge.
How Udaan started
In India, almost half the citizens live in deepening insecurity, threatened not by terrorists or war, but by society they are born into. Girls and women face severe discrimination throughout their lives, right from infancy to Old age. They are told that their lives are about supporting their families, their husband, their children, and they start believing as if they do not have any other purpose of their existence.
These normalized attributes restrict them from developing their independent identity and realization of their potential. We see that such conditions of male entitlement lead to many incidences of violence against women, both within and outside of the homes.
During our field visits for a youth development and Child Bonded labor program in 2014, we noticed the different realities and traditional needs of young men and women belonging to tribal &
rural areas. We also came across the different ways in which some young women are defying set social boundaries in their families in small ways.
Objectives of the Program
- Empower young girls to take on leadership roles in their communities.
- Challenge and change societal norms that limit opportunities for women and girls.
- Develop essential life skills such as communication, decision-making, and critical thinking.
- Create role models who inspire other young girls to lead social and cultural transformation in their communities.
- Promote education and skill development to enhance personal and community-level growth.
How we work?
Synergy Udaan fellows use a leadership development strategy with young women or girls around their age. We believe that it’s a fundamental to strengthen the fellows’ roots through broadening their awareness of themselves – their individuality and social identity, their strengths and limitations, their fears and aspirations, their rights, and their social and cultural surroundings.
In the second phase of the strategy, fellows broaden their horizons by expanding their potential areas, becoming role models for other young people in their communities and facilitating similar journeys for other young women. Fellows take part in the development and implementation of a social action project in their communities to accomplish this. Fellows are encouraged to pursue their dreams following goals post completion of their two year program.
