Skills I Utilized

• Running a treadmill to keep a project running successfully: Maintaining the energy to give my 110% to the girls everyday during class -- and then run around my exhausting schedule was physically hard work, but also exhilarating!
• Getting an Idea and Running with it: Even undertaking this project was a leap for me; but on the ground, I had to be decisive and fast-acting due to the short time, and also to justify my role as project manager in the community
• Balancing being Inclusive [the participatory process] and being Directive [taking command when necessary]: Before undertaking this project, I focused on making sure everyone felt heard and relied too much on collaboration rather than on calling decisions myself (when I was in the position to). Now I've found the effective medium!
• Flexible Resourcefulness: What do you do when monsoon rains get into your taxi's engine when you have 35 girls and half the village elders waiting for you, when the certificate-printer is closed due to a power-outage, when you plan a lesson around a series of carefully-strung videos and youtube unearthed-gems and then plug in the battery/inverter to hear it sputter and fail thanks to the dishonest salesman, when you walk into class with hours-worth of preparation to conduct reading activities, only to find out that 80% of the girls are holding the newspapers upside-down and had grossly exaggerated their reading abilities, when the sociologist whom your entire project relied upon the on-site support of, has broken her ankle and is unable to even get to the site????? ...... Well, you take a deep breath (or 10), tell yourself that you can work with this opportunity to rise above a challenge, and get to it!
• 'Counseling'/Listening/Being Actively Reflective but Not Interfering/Imposing

What Made Project SHAKTI Successful?

• Using media from Dehi-based NGO Going to School in India and UNICEF that depicted other real women from villages tremendously helped me send a very strong and influential message to the girls: that they should believe in themselves, dream big, and then work hard and, if possible or necessary, go to school to realize their dreams. 7 Girls in my program have since enrolled in school. For some, Project SHAKTI was the first to encourage them to go to school and believe in themselves; and a few girls are picking themselves up after very difficult circumstances to go to school, such as the death, disability, resistance, and lack of funds of their parents.

• I found that even when I wasn’t imparting these abstract ideas, teaching very mundane, simple things like color mixing, the Hindi alphabet, making Rakhis, and how to read a map or a newspaper were basic skills that helped the girls feel confident. Those who later went on to enroll in school then found it easier to transition after the long gap years as much of this was either assumed or taken up for review in the first weeks.

• Another successful component of the project came from an idea that my mother and I had in response to the girls’ interest in sewing. We asked them to form groups in which a girl who had some knowledge would teach others. These groups not only more rightly replaced the study/self-help groups I intended to create, but gave them a fun, community building, empowering, and useful activity to work on together during the long afternoons that girls said they usually remained empty-handed and bored in.
  

• The most important basis of success was, I think, being able to be patient and loving and having  "unconditional positive regard" for the girls, even when they girls were rude or ungratefully demanding. I learned that the primary reason the girls “tried so hard to listen” to what I told them and tried to implement it was because each girl knew that “Ms. Lipi really loves me,” as I heard from many girls. Similarly, if I had been quicker to give them things before first allowing them to go through the process of figuring out what they need and problem-solving to acquire it, then Project SHAKTI would not have been as empowering for the girls. For example, I told the sewing groups that I would be available for help, but I didn’t buy any supplies at first. Surprisingly, they never asked. Instead they got creative and borrowed from relatives, investing many people in their initiative to learn. So, I gifted many sewing supply packages only at the end, as a reward and encouragement. I think those supplies have much more value to them now that they truly earned them.