The Aarohini Initiative

The Aarohini Intitiative is a girls’ empowerment and education program, initiated in 2011, that consists of training teachers who are working in Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalayas (KGBVs) in Uttar Pradesh, India. Conceived, experimented, conceptualized and formalized after 10 years of extensive work in Prerna Girls School, Aarohini is designed to enable teachers with the tools and mindset necessary to bring about change in their students’ lives. It aims to create a chain of positive influence with teachers as agents of change who in turn build the capacity of their students to recognize and challenge gender discrimination, and engage with parents to ensure that the rights of their students are protected. The program holds at its core the use of critical feminist pedagogy and community mobilization. Critical feminist pedagogy is based on the ideology that girls and women must learn to critically examine the social and political conditions of their lies and the systemic of their oppression, then collectively find ways to strengthen themselves, resist oppressive societal norms, and transform their lives. Aarohini uses this pedagogy to first enable the teachers, most of whom are women, to critically examine and understand how gender constructs and impacts women and girls’ lives in India, including their own. Additionally, Aarohini believes that to create lasting change, the process of empowerment must be accompanied by a change in the girls' environment. Community mobilization hinges on expanding the teachers' role and preparing them for collective action. Thus, Aarohini is not simply a girls’ education and empowerment program, but an ecosystem that works to eliminate discrimination faced by adolescent girls. It operates on the premise that through self awareness, a supportive and empathetic environment, and a culture of dialogue, girls can achieve positive life outcomes.