Abstract

Funded and supported by the Malala Fund, the project titled Empowerment-based Mentoring Model for Adolescent Girls: Action Research in Bihar, created a mentoring model that aimed at honing leadership skills of adolescent girls and boys and providing them with tools and resources to develop critical thinking skills. In order to develop a responsive and scalable mentoring model, it was important to understand the lived experiences of children: how do adolescents spend their time, what are the kind of play activities in which they engage, who are their friends, what kind of work do they do and what they think about the world and themselves.

The team wanted to ensure that the mentoring model that was developed enabled adolescents to examine, analyse and potentially change their perceptions and knowledge of themselves and their aspirations. Therefore, a baseline survey of all the students from classes six and seven in all the selected schools in Muzaffarpur and Patna was conducted. The mentoring model was developed in response to the nature and characteristics of the local context, and the baseline was used as the starting point to understand the lives of the adolescents to ensure that the mentoring model is in tune with their socio-cultural and economic contexts.

The baseline survey reveals that the adolescents surveyed were impoverished at home and at school, wherein many schools lacked adequate infrastructure and resources to deliver quality education. It finds that geographical locations (urban and rural) have varying social and economic consequences for adolescents, such as differential standards of living, linguistic skills, and care work responsibilities. The survey also illustrates that children had internalised conventional gendered and casteist attitudes. Additionally, a common phenomenon was that teachers were overburdened with work, rendering them unable to devote much time to mentoring students and building a relationship with them. The report provides an overview of the circumstances and challenges, giving the foundational information on which the mentoring model was developed.

Menon, N., Ghatak, N., Yareseeme, A. S., Iyer, A., Jha, J. (2019) Girls can run as fast as boys – understanding the lives of adolescent girls and boys in Bihar. Centre for Budget and Policy Studies. Bangalore.