Concept of the Project

Breaking Women Poverty Cycle: Empowering Adolescent Girls to become Agents of Social Transformation project is undertaken by Institute for Development Studies and Practices IDSP-Pakistan, initially with the assistance of UNESCO, to initiate diverse innovative actions, which will hopefully multiply options of learning and education for divers groups of learners. This initiative is thus conceptualized with the rationale of creating an alternative methodology for basic education for adolescent girls. The action was primarily focused to address the issues of poverty through broad based capacity development activities.
The project target is to benefit adolescent girls of poor rural areas empowering them through building capacities and addressing their poverty conditions. Both the areas were selected on the criteria of poverty and women educational situation. It is important to explain here that the nature of the process project is relatively complex and diverse. It was not initiated on already formed basis rather it considered as an evolving and gradually enhancing initiative.
Four countries of South Asia; Bangladesh, India, Nepal and Pakistan have been selected for the project. Pakistan has been included relatively late into the regional network. A contract has been signed between CONCERN and IDSP in which the project will have the valuable support of CONCERN for one year.
The project has completed the phase (18 months). Project completed the first phase and second phase of the Project is agreed by UNESCO for other eighteen months form Sep 2004 to March 2006 in second phase the Project is focused on “Diversifying Empowerment Opportunities for adolescents by creating viable experimentations for policy formulation”.

GOAL OF THE FIRST PHASE
To generate a process of improvement in poor women’s livelihoods, by targeting poor adolescent girls, through broad based activities as well as through advocacy for favorable policy formulation.
GOAL OF THE SECOND PHASE
• Provide Opportunities to adolescent girls and boys for connecting literacy, knowledge of science and vocational training in to a reflective learning center in Sabeel and Momin Abad.
• Enabling adolescent girls and boys to address poverty through holistic human development process
First Phase Objectives
• Providing an integrated capacity building program for empowering young women and enhancing their capabilities for becoming agents of social transformation, particularly, for the desired changes in poor women’s situation.
• Mobilizing the communities of Project areas to offer favorable environment to girls and women and to acknowledge their role towards the social, economic and cultural development of the community.
• Sharing the learning from pilot initiatives and action-research with the policy makers and assist them in designing policies, with particular attention to poor adolescent girls needs.
Second phase Program Objective
• Engaging 12 Mentors, Associate Mentors, Interns in Sabeel and Momin Abad. A community discourse of theory practice on education processes for human for resource development.
• Strengthen RLCs and translate good practices of the first phase in the application for second phase.
• Generating 10 to 12 community-based Reflective Learning Spaces for adolescents’ girls and boys in the Targeted Area.
• Provide 400 to 500 adolescent girls and boys learning opportunities in order to enable them to combat the challenges of life and engaging 200 learners of the first phase with different activities.
• Institutionalize the project into IDSP core in order to expend the influence and effect of the initiatives on policy making level.