Gender PARity activities with students of classes 8th, 9th, and 10th at the village level

There is a gender imbalance prevalent in the rural society in terms of their participation in the 26 decision-making process and participation in general. OLS always tries to empower adolescent girls, women & SHG members on their rights and participation. OLS organized gender PARity awareness activities with girls of classes 8th,9th, and 10th at the village level in 8 Gram Panchyat of the Nimapada Block with the support of Transform School, people for Action.

Before implementing the PARity program OLS has identified 10 local facilitators and all facilitators from OLS attended virtual Transform PARity training conducted by PFA. All the facilitators were trained and provided with a PARity facilitator handbook for their reference.

The identification of the village was made according to the percentage of girls attending their regular classes which is the main objective of the program to empower them in the decision-making process. 64 villages were identified in 8 G.P of the project area.

In our district, the level of knowledge of the gender issue is very poor, especially in rural areas. OLS takes over the responsibility to create awareness among the girl students of the Nimapada block of Puri district. OLS conducted 64 programs in 8 Gram Panchayat by covering 1511 girls in 64 villages as follows:

Sl No.	Name of the G.P.	No. of villages covered	No. of participants
1	Kothakusanga	2	60
2	Dhaleswar	11	281
3	Alanda	10	243
4	Sainsa	4	82
5	Uchhupur	14	341
6	Gopinathpur	11	234
7	Sagada	5	115
8	Rench	7	155
	Total	64`	1511

It is learned that community people have taken an interest to gain knowledge on gender equality, but due to a lack of proper awareness, they do not have received any knowledge on the topic. Presently, community girls are taking an interest to create awareness among their parents and motivate them to take an interest in their future dream to fulfill. After the workshop, their confidence level increased. All the girl participantsh ave been sensitized and showed their interest to move forward, however, due to the lack of awareness among the parents, their interest fell and they have not expressed their views in front of their parents. So, we think parent sensitization programming should be carried out in this regard. Conducting such types of training related to school-going children is very helpful for village areas. A little bit of encouragement and awareness to our children makes them good learners in the future.