Utthan Rising: Peer Leadership Training for Survivors
The need for this peer leadership training with a group of selected survivors is intimately connected with the idea of restorative care. This is needed to ensure enhanced survivor participation in care planning and need-based advocacy with duty bearers and service providers at different levels. The need for such a training had also emerged as an action point during the first part of the initial workshop with social workers. With a view to facilitating adult-youth partnership crucial to the success of the restorative care approach, social workers were also invited to participate in the peer leadership trainings. With survivors and their caregivers as joint participants, these were carried out in three phases following participatory workshop methodologies
Workshop 1: Youth Adult Partnership and Resilient
Objectives:
To help the group understand and build a sense of purpose and meaning in collectivisation and its impact on prevention, protection and rehabilitation of survivors of sex trafficking
To explore the ‘leader’ in themselves and strengthen the desire to inspire others as a change-maker
To build a sense of support group and team with other survivors from other areas
To raise awareness on youth-adult partnership and its principles
Understand resilience and the resources that the group has – individually and as a group
Training Components:
Principles and processes of youthadult partnerships and programmes
Resilience- its significance, the components and the builders and busters
Exploring Leadership and different styles
Team building, decision making and problem solving in groups; roles and responsibilities in group dynamics
Methodology:
The training used a combination of several methods keeping in mind the educational levels of the survivors, age, contextual realities and their skills. Interactive lectures, games, exercises, debates and quizzes, group work and projective techniques were used to ensure experiential and self-reflective insights, sharing and learnings.
To explore the relationship between violence & body image and consequently body image and self esteem/ resilience
To understand the context of violence against women and gender based patriarchy; the concepts of power and control and how sexuality can be used as a tool of control
To understanding the difference between shame and guilt, the eroding impact of shame and how shame can be fought
Strengthen participation and trust in the group; foster leadership skills of effective communication, planning and decision making
Training Components:
Exploring sexuality and values around sexuality
Body image and memories- their impact on self esteem and self worth
Exploring shame and how to fight it (shame resilience)
Exploring Leadership and different styles
Team building, decision making and problem solving in groups; roles and responsibilities in group dynamics
Methodology:
Interactive lectures
Small group work and exercises
Story-telling and comprehension
Art/ Drawing
Role plays
Games
Workshop 3: Human Rights, Advocacy, State Accountability
Objectives:
Understanding human rights, violations and impact
Understanding the rights based model visà-vis the charity and needs based model
Learning about State commitments/accountability and our responsibilities
Identification of duty bearers and stakeholders who matter
Understanding the importance of communication and advocacy to claim one’s rights
Re-iterating the goals of the collective/ group
Training Components:
The evolution and differences between charity-based, needbased and rights-based models of development work
Human Rights – what are they and why they are important
Special focus on four groups of children, which includes child victims of sexual exploitation – rights that get violated
Stakeholders and Duty Bearers – the differences in their roles
Focused Advocacy for redressing violations and exercising rights
Ensuring survivor participation through collectivisation
Methodology:
Interactive lectures using visual and textual handouts
Participative discussions and group work
Using projective symbols for programme representation
Efficiency and Efficacy of the Utthan Workshops
Since these trainings have been assessed through an external evaluation (Banerjee, May 2014), relevant excerpts from that report are presented below to highlight the extent to which this capacity building initiative has been able to achieve its stated goals.
What Utthan means to me?
Utthan advocating on the ToP Bill.
Telling Lies- Utthan busts myths about trafficked victims