Girls Learning and Leadership Program
Girls Learning and Leadership Program
The Girls' Learning and Leadership Program (GLLP) is CSEI’s flagship gender-transformative programme to create learning and leadership opportunities for girls and young women from marginalised communities. It builds upon CSEI’s decadal work of promoting Youth Equity Forums (YEFs), adding the special focus on girls and young women with an intersectional lens.
It was launched in response to the significant setbacks marginalized communities faced during the COVID-19 pandemic and its complex impact on women and girls. The GLLP framework builds sustainable community-based institutional mechanisms along two empowering streams:
Promoting leadership and life skills
Providing curriculum support to enhance academic skills
The GLLP is built on the ‘fellowship model’, providing a nominal support to the Girl Champions (GCs) during the period they engage in building the peer group and disseminating their learning to other young girls in their habitations. The Girl Champions effectively use the fellowship support to pursue their own studies while engaging with their communities. Over the past four years, GLLP has evolved to create institutional mechanisms and multiple streams of learning and leadership.
Why GLLP?
The pandemic exacerbated existing inequalities, particularly for young girls from SC, ST, and Minority communities. With the sudden halt in economic activities, many parents lost jobs, deepening financial insecurity in families. The widespread school closures disrupted education for millions, leaving many girls struggling to continue their studies.
The shift to online learning posed additional challenges, as access to digital devices and reliable internet was limited, creating a digital divide that further disadvantaged girls. Gender disparities in education grew, with many families prioritizing limited resources for boys' education over girls'.
The GLLP aims to address these obstacles, empowering girls with the skills and resources they need to overcome these barriers and thrive in a post-pandemic world.