Society of Sisters of

Arogyamatha, Kadapa
Project Submitted by
Rev. Sister. Catherine Mesa
NON-FORMAL
EDUCATION TO
ADOLESCENT GIRLS
Empowering adolescent girls from the rural catholic
Parishes providing trainings in income generation
activities

This project is a successful accomplishment of the proposed activities as per
the project proposal and the commitment of the project holder to the donor.
The project has opened a new source of building self-confidence to the
trainees in achieving the desired economic empowerment. As an earning
member of the family, the trainees have a say in running their families an
earning woman is respected and her words means what she speaks of.
Rev. Sister. Catherine Mesa
1
NON-FORMAL EDUCATION TO
ADOLESCENT GIRLS
Empowering adolescent girls from the rural catholic Parishes providing
trainings in income generation activities
Empowerment of women means
different things to different people
and different people define this with
different connotations of which most
of them are deep rooted in the
immediate environments. A country
that has registered a high ratio of
women literacy definitely defines
women empowerment in a different
contextual connotations that a
country like India where the overall
women literacy remains much less than men. The 2011 census puts the literacy ratio
of men at 82%, the women literacy ratio is only 65% - a huge fall in the female literacy
ratio.
In a country like India where tradition takes precedence in every matter on a day to
day basis, pushing woman as a secondary citizen and curbing her freedom in as many
ways as possible making sure that she depends on the male members of the family
irrespective of whether or not she is educated, gives a different connotations of
empowerment. For an Indian woman, empowerment means, free from cultural
exploitations, access to education, free to
express her thoughts and free to discuss
her issues, free from sexual
exploitations, and economic freedom. For
over the years, experiences have proved
that an earning woman does demand her
respect and her voice is heard in her
family matters. For a country like India
where poverty pushes every household of
middle class or poorer classes to its
fringe, an earning woman is respected
and this adds self-confidence to her. When a woman becomes an earning member of
her family, she takes active part in running the family affairs and she makes sure
Rev. Sister. Catherine Mesa
2
that her voice is heard. Most of all, she certainly feels the morale of confidence is
raised and a sense of economic freedom gives her an identity within her family and in
the immediate social environment.
Realising the importance of economic
freedom and thus making woman an
earning member of her family, the project
was envisaged and the implementation
was in tune with according to the
proposed activities at the time of approval.
It was heartening to see the kind of
response the project invoked at the time of
its beginning. There was an overwhelming
response from the target groups adolescent girls and their parents to get involved
in the project activities. With the enthusiasm and personal motivation of the target
group, the project stands achieving its goal at the end of the project completion. The
participation was beyond expectations given to the social restrictions that the Indian
society imposes on the development of the girl children. As was the enthusiasm of
the participants so also was their attendance all through the course period.

Project Activities:
On approval of the project by the Swiss League of Catholic Women (SLCW), Society
of Sisters of Arogyamatha (SSA) began the preparation work for the project
immediately.
SSA gave a serious thinking on the recruitment of staff and the kind of training that
each staff should be provided to make the project a success in achieving the planned
target at the end of the project period. This project consists of a project director and
four trainer staff. Though the staff who were recruited for the project were trained
and experienced in the trades that the project
intended to provide to the target group, SSA
gave further training to help them understand
the spirit and charism of SSA. Throughout the
project period, SSA conducted workshops and
seminars to the teachers and trainees and
created awareness among them. This was
further reinforced their outlook on the
importance of economic independence of
women for a healthy social identity in the society.
Rev. Sister. Catherine Mesa
3
For the purpose of the training centres,
SSA identified and selected four
training centres at Chennur Parish,
Kadapa Parish, Nandipalli Parish,
and Muddanur Parish. Each centre
had the capacity to a maximum intake
of fifty trainees and thus the project
trained two hundred adolescent
girls at the end of the project
completion. SSA also opened a field
office and community level
vocational centres at the four parishes with an appointment of staff at the field office.
On completion establishing training centres and field office at the target places, SSA
began to acquire necessary training and teaching materials and the same were
distributed among the four training centres.
Once the preparation level of the project is achieved with added staff and teaching
and training materials at hand, SSA recruited school dropped out adolescent girls and
women for the training in informal education.
The project began its implementation schedule as per the agreed date of the
project.

Training Materials:
All the trainees were provided with a
resource kit for the non-formal
education. This is to ensure a successful
completion of the training and also to
avoid depending on the each other on a
shared resource kit which will make the
training a complicated and more time
consuming as well. When the training
becomes a bit complicated on account of
the sharing the same resource kit by two
or more trainees. In such case, the trainees have to wait for the turn of their own to
use the kit. This will put off the interest of the trainees attending the classes regularly.
In order to avoid such recurrence, the project provided each resource kit to each
trainee so that they can practice even on their own. This is to encourage self-learning
by the trainees as well after the classes were over.
Rev. Sister. Catherine Mesa
4

Skills Trainings in centres on the basis
of requirements:
As it was proposed in the project proposal, SSA
implemented technical trainings in tailoring (dress
making), embroidery, basket making and mehendi
design in Muddanur and Nandipalli centres. The
training sessions are divided into theory as well as
practical sessions. Each training session was
comprised of four hours of this, two hours each was spared for theory and practical
trainings. It is to be noted here that the trainers spent more time in theory during the
first few weeks of the project implementation in order to make sure that each trainee
understood the theory part of the trainings well so that it becomes easy for the
trainees to learn and practice on their own based on the theoretical learning. The
theory sessions were used as a fundamental for the trainees, and they were
encouraged to form their own methodologies that suit their learning process. In the
same way, trainings in Tailoring and beautician courses were conducted in another
two centres Kadapa and Chennur
training centres.

Since beautician course needs a more of
practical sessions and relatively a good
number of hours on theoretical learning
was spent in the beginning of the course
and hours spent on practical sessions
was increased as the theoretical
learning was satisfactorily accumulated
so as the trainees could concentrate
more on practical sessions. During the
course of time, as part of self-learning,
the trainees practiced their learned
skills on each other under the
supervision of the trainer. The feedback
given to the trainees by each other after
each practical session was of immensely
helpful to the girls to improve their
learning.

Rev. Sister. Catherine Mesa
5
Awareness Trainings
One of the basic charism of SSA is bringing
awarenss among the rural women especially
among the uneducated who are, more or
less, without any discrimination across the
caste, treated as second class citizens by
their own family members and by the society
at large. The dependency of women on their
men counterpart in their families is not
something new to the Indian society over the
decades. SSA has taken this as a matter of
mandatory charism to bring awareness
among the target women in the
communities.

As part of the progress making, SSA
conducted workshops/ awareness trainings
in order to equip the 200 trainees at the four
centres with socio economic conditions of
women in the society with a focus to the
local communities from where the trainees
come. An awareness training on Gender
Equality and Gender Sensitivity was provided to the trainees at the all the four
training centres. In addition to the resource person, a few other identified seminar
speakers were also involved in making this seminar a great learning and awareness
creating platform for the target group.

In addition to this, SSA also conducted awareness seminars on legal matters
especially on laws pertaining to Domestic Violence, Dowry, Child Labour, Child
Marriage and Equal Rights. The main resources persons of the seminars were leading
legal practiceners. It is highly worthy to mention here that one of the well acclaimed
judges of the local civil courts Justice G. Malathi was a resource person for a seminar
on domestic violence.
All the seminars which are directly related to women and children were of interactive
nature. The participants raised questions based on their daily life and got legal
opinion on matters bothering them much.

Rev. Sister. Catherine Mesa
6
SSA also organized seminars on social
believes such as superstitions, quack
and addiction to alcohol and other
drugs issues. This seminar had Justice
Kesav as the resource person for the
day.
SSA invited resource persons who are
professional in the area of the topic for
the seminars and whose integrity is
upheld above the ordinary in their life.

Project Review and Reporting:
All through the project implementation
period, SSA was very much particular about
the project review meetings on a monthly
basis. It was taken seriously by all the
stakeholders and the feedback and findings
of all the review meetings were recorded on
books for future reference as well as
learning process.
We also bring to your kind notice that SSA
has earlier submitted the status report to
SLCW and half-yearly report with all the quantitative data for the reporting periods.
We are happy to share our immense
gratitude to you for your noble gesture
towards our target group and fulfilling our
dream of creating a Gender Equalitarian
society in the neighbourhood.
We once again thank you and remain
grateful to you for all your suggestions
and support whenever we were in need of
during the project period.


Rev. Sister. Catherine Mesa
Mother Superior General