Gearing Up for Service Learning

The students were busy at work Wednesday through Friday receiving training from our partner NGO, VOICE 4 Girls. This organization’s mission is to open doors for marginalized girls in India by helping them take charge of their futures through critical knowledge and life skills in activity based camps. These camps include lessons on health, safety, self-awareness, rights, higher education, marriage and future planning. They also give young girls the tools to navigate interpersonal skills, leadership, problem-solving, independence, and critical thinking. Programs like this address the harsh realities affecting young Indian girls and is best described in the following excerpt from the official VOICE for Girls counselor manual:

“ There are 113 million adolescent girls in India, of whom 30% complete Class 10 (the final grade of high school). Close to half of the total number of adolescent girls are married before the legal age of eighteen. Girls are expected to be quiet and obedient, especially to the men in their lives. Things become worse because of the social expectation put on girls to become wives and housemakers, which takes away their power to choose. Caught between traditional expectations, social norms and poverty, girls are denied the right to make decisions and take charge of their futures. Because of this, girls often marry and have children before they are eighteen, have little or no control over their own lives and rarely study or get jobs, which makes them marginalized. Lacking the information they require to choose, decide and negotiate for themselves, adolescent girls often do not reach their potential.”

Our CIEE Global Navigators will be working with students ages 12-15 and leading classes for Speak Up!, a VOICE 4 Girls module focused on teaching English through relevant thematic units related to school, health, one’s future, and college. In order to prepare for their teaching roles, CIEE students learned the ins and outs of the curriculum provided by VOICE 4 Girls, and how to successfully lesson prep, co-plan and co-teach. They also learned how to manage a classroom in the context of India by using effective ice-breakers, time-management, facilitation techniques and behavior management. Many of the girls described how valuable they found the training and think that the skills they learned will transfer into many areas of their life, especially as leaders and global citizens.