“Arts for Gender Justice at grassroots promotes gender equality and social justice by cultivating artistic expression to challenge harmful norms and beliefs about girls and women.”
Healing & Expressive Power of Creative Arts
Education through the Performing Arts, a Protsahan program that uses the healing and creative power of arts to help reimagine education and foster lifelong learning by focusing on building confidence for girls left behind at the bottom of the pyramid, especially between the ages 8 to 18, to process and speak about feelings related to trauma and displacement. It guides adolescent girls to develop critical skills through multimedia, sculpting, theatre, dance movement therapy, art and poetry. This project is at the very core of Protsahan’s HEART Model approach of working with ‘invisible forgotten adolescents’ at the last rung of the social ladder. We believe that art has the power to heal, inspire, provoke, challenge and offer hope. Arts for Gender Justice at grassroots is designed to create awareness to bring gender equality and social justice by cultivating artistic expression to address issues affecting young girls and their communities and to challenge harmful norms and beliefs about girls and women. Protsahan encourages girls to take up photography and filmmaking and speak up issues that matter to them beautifully depicted in this film.
Empathy, Creativity and Intersectionality
Protsahan’s work is rooted in empathy, creativity and intersectionality. We understand that there is no gender justice for a girl child without access to information, education, healthcare, disaster relief work, immigration justice, and climate justice. What if, she was given a platform to express her aspirations and voice through beautiful art, films, photography, poetry, theater and more, that made the world stand up and take notice and she found her own voice in the process, which was gagged for decades, until now.
Producing Pathbreaking Children’s Films
Girls from Protsahan worked on four critical film projects under this program where they acted in, directed and wrote the script with mentors from Kahani Ghar (Pune) and Big Klick Media (Delhi) to speak about issues of Child Marriage, Environment, Gender Justice and Open Defecation, and Toilets for Girls. One of these films went on to bag the top honors for children’s films at the BRICS International Film Festival 2018.
Posters and Theater on Sanitation
Girls from Protsahan worked with Kids Powered Media to design games and posters on Sanitation and Handwashing to spread awareness in their communities on these issues. They have also performed several nukkad nataks (street theater) for advocating in communities on issues like Girl Education and Financial Independence of Girls.
Fun Board Games on Menstrual Hygiene
Girls from Protsahan got mentorship with IIT Delhi under Ritika Chaplot during the prototyping of board games for Menstrual Hygiene. In a bid to break the myths and taboos surrounding menstrual hygiene, students from IIT Delhi designed a set of games for young girls and women to spread awareness about periods in a fun, engaging manner. Consisting of a set of three games – a jig-saw puzzle, a memory game, and roulette, the module focuses on the basics of menstrual hygiene, such as how often sanitary napkins must be changed and how they should be disposed of.
