know your body know your rights

The Know Your Body Know Your Rights (KYBKYR) programme works to empower adolescents and youth across by delivering stigma-free and rights-affirming information on issues of health, sexuality and human rights. The programme builds young people and adolescents’ capacity to advocate for their health and well-being at the personal, community, state and national levels.

A serious dearth of Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE) creates an information gap that makes young people vulnerable to challenges like violence, HIV, abuse, and gender inequality. It also impairs their ability to access resources for a healthier life and relationships. KYBKYR, through its comprehensive CSE curriculum, addresses this problem by capacitating young people with the tools and knowledge to negotiate around such issues with key stakeholders such as family members, community members, and policymakers.

The KYBKYR programme uses a youth-led advocacy model to create a bottom-up demand for CSE in both in- and out-of-school settings. A three-pronged approach advances this goal: training youth-oriented organisations to take up long term AYSRHR programming and advocacy, implementing CSE curricula in marginalised communities, and engaging with government programmes and policies at the local, state and national levels towards increasing young people’s access to SRHR services and information.

The Programme is currently active in 3 states in Northern India: NCR, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. It works with two different age groups: adolescents between the ages of 9-13 years, and adolescents of 14 years of age and above.

Locations

NCR

Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh

Barabanki, Uttar Pradesh

Siddharthnagar, Uttar Pradesh

Rohtas, Bihar

Buxar, Bihar

Nadwan, Bihar

Bodh Gaya, Bihar

Jamui, Bihar, India

Related Resources

Impact of the Programme

The programme works to build intersectional feminist lens towards accessing their sexual and reproductive rights. An external evaluation of the programme conducted in 2015 has revealed that the programme has achieved an increased level of leadership, self-confidence and negotiation skills amongst young women and girls. A majority of the participants recognise how the stigma attached to SRHR issues adversely impacts their bodily integrity and rights. Young people in the programme not only have increased SRH information, they also hold a strong rights-based perspective, and see themselves as rights holders. One example of this is Shanti, a peer educator from Uttar Pradesh. She gave timely support to a 12 year old rape survivor in her community, thereby averting unsafe childbirth as well as an unreported crime.

“My college is 6 kms from my home. Earlier my brother used to drop me and pick me from my college. But after attending the training, I sat with my parents, explained to them about gender-based discrimination, restrictions on mobility of girls and gender-stereotypes. Thereby, I could convince my father to let me go to college on my own. He then convinced my mother. And now I take a taxi and go to college all by myself.”

- Female Master Trainer

OnGoing Work

The Programme has been working in partnership with five organisations from 3 states. The programme works on two levels currently: Building organizational capacity on AYSRHR interventions in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar; Direct intervention and provision of CSE in different geographies and settings in NCR.