Revisiting our first circle at My Perch: Witnessing new facilitators in making :-)

“This is a journey into the unknown, to something completely new.”

Going back to where Sahas once began its journey didn’t come so easily, it took us exactly a year to revisit our first circle at My Perch. Aren’t we taught that success comes to those who keep marching ahead without looking back, however I feel otherwise – we need to keep revisiting our roots, coz that would keep us grounded and help us move ahead :-) My Perch has changed a lot over a year and yes for good- but what that has not changed is the warmth, love, trust and belief that ‘happy childhood’ is possible. 

We were welcomed with smiles and the famous question “Didi, do you remember my name?” All I could do was to respond back with a grin. They gathered around us, holding our hands, complaining as to why we didn’t come before? Do you miss us? There were lot of new faces who looked astonished at what is this chaos happening?

We then invited the participants to sit in the circle and share anything that has happened during the course of this year.

“So whenever someone talks about boys and girls- the first response of the participants is oh! They didn’t attend gender classes that’s why they are comparing”

“Can you tell us, how do we talk to other boys about this?”

The participants were then divided into their respective gender groups and were given snakes and ladders games to play- each snake and ladder had a message written over it; ladder had a question so if you answer the question then only you would rise high. 

One of the girl gender leaders was sitting with 3 boys, two new and one old- and then the question came up “What is menstruation?” she hesitated, looked at us and then started explaining what is menstruation, why it is important? And how few traditions around the same affect the life of a girl?

Another boy gender leader explained to the mixed group of participants what is sex?

“Didi, you only tell them, she is laughing. I think she is shy!”

“No, just give a try” I insisted.

What happened next was nothing less than a miracle, he talked about male and female sexual organs, and how intercourse happens in both Hindi and English languages to his group members:-)For me, I was seeing something that I never imagined, never thought about it, all our motive was to create a safe space where we can talk about topics related to adolescence and support them with the questions they have during this age. However, with our intervention, we were able to create a counter narrative where the adolescents were able to question what is told to them, share the information told to them and facilitate peer to peer learning :-)

We also felicitated the participants and My Perch with the certificates and interestingly we were surprised by a beautiful painting being gifted to us. Then we were offered momos and fried rice in lunch and guess what!  these were cooked by none other than our participants. I was filled with gratitude, love and affection for them and for the space that has given us so much :-)

It was magical to see little facilitators creating a discourse around the issues of menstruation, sex, gender, sexuality etc which are considered taboo-ed in our society with a never seen confidence. I don’t really know what is the definition of change? But what we witnessed was a new wave of informed adolescents who have taken the reigns of their lives in their own hand which is nothing less than magic :-)