Society

Making Boys Part of the Solution

Use alternative text for screenreaders that can't display images. — Boys in Focus: ECF-Workshop (Photo: Equal Community Foundation)

EQUAL COMMUNITY FOUNDATION | Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung (RLS) and Equal Community Foundation (ECF) are working together to create a free and more righteous society for all genders. Unlike the majority of other gender-based approaches, this project specifically targets boys and young men, who might become perpetrators within patriarchal structures but at the same time can also suffer from patriarchy and sexual violence.

In 2019 RLS and ECF successfully completed a project which focused on sensitising boys and young men for gender issues by producing films and other pop-cultural products with them. This was directed towards the aim to establish a programme among a broad alliance of Indian civil-society organisations to raise boys and young men towards a gender-equitable adulthood, called “Project Raise.”

We are continuing our joint work with another project in 2020. In workshops over several days challenges and solutions about raising gender equitable boys will be elaborated.

Our Partner

Being based in Pune, the Equal Community Foundation (ECF) works with boys belonging to the age group of 13 to 17. Yet, only a few organisations who care about gender equality and gender equity run programs that seek outcomes that demonstrate changes in boy’s and men’s behaviour. ECF was founded in 2009 to tackle this gap by raising every adolescent boy in India to be gender equitable - an outcome ECF calls Gender Equitable Boys.