Equality Clubs

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Role

Project Manager

Project Type

Educational Program

Audience

High School Students

Organization

YLAC

Client

Oxfam india

Problem

The civic education in India being instructional in its approach lacks the tools to give students in order to achieve social justice in their environments.

Insight

Experiential learning would provide learners the inspiration to take action.

Strategy

The aim is to raise consciousness, help build empathy and appreciation of one’s own privilege, and inspire students to take action.

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Solution

The clubs adopt an experiential learning approach to help students explore challenging societal problems, break stereotypes and equip them with the skills necessary to take on leadership to re-write societal norms.
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With an intricately designed toolkit, full of activities and resources for a facilitator to use, Oxfam and YLAC hope that the Equality Clubs will become India’s catalysts for change – a place where thought-provoking debates and discussions trigger ideas to #SmashInequality that exists around us.

My Role

Learning and Curriculum Designer
As a curriculum developer, I developed a lesson plan for each club module. These consisted of themes overarching gender equality, economic equality, climate justice and diversity and inclusion.

The most important thing for me was to recognize the context in which the learners are participating in the clubs and their variability in cultures, settings (rural, towns and urban), and at an individual level. Thus the focus remained on making the concepts enjoyable enough for the students to think about them critically.

The focus of my lesson plans remained on embodied cognition and making use of outdoor spaces to learn. The social inequalities occur in the real world; hence as learners, we must prepare to see them rather than remain desensitized.

During the pandemic, as we moved entirely online, I developed a technical support toolkit for teachers as they transitioned to the online teaching world. This was my first opportunity to develop a toolkit for adult learners, encouraging me to push beyond my comfort zone. In doing so, I was more conscious of prior knowledge. I created flash cards as refreshers in the toolkit to ensure the low probability of an expertise reversal principle in action.
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‍Creative Producer
I developed the brief and storyboard and represented YLAC’s interest in developing the Equality Clubs video.
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Social Media Manager
I assumed the role of the social media manager of the Oxfam Equality Clubs' handle. I curated the best entries across all schools to foster inspiration and encouragement amongst the fellows.

I also hosted Instagram lives to facilitate engagement between club members across the country. Beyond this, I led the strategy for developing online competitions to boost confidence amongst club members for their impactful work.

Key Learnings

There is a critical need for high quality educational multimedia resources addressing civic issues in the Indian context. While this quality of production is achieved in the West, the lack of content catering to a young audience through edutainment remains an important market space.
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Development of online toolkits require more informative and engaging resources, as experiential learning models cannot take place online. Thus, the focus can also be diverted into more reflective activities that foster metacognitive processing.