Date
20-Apr-2021 to 20-Apr-2021 		Location
Virtual		 Format
Institutional

Under the project, ‘Our Health, Our Voice’, PRIA held a Focus Group Discussion (FGD) on the issue of “Safety” with a group of 10 adolescents living in informal settlements in Sikandarpur, Gurugram.

The discussion was organised on April 20, 2021. Participants were asked to name spaces that they frequent, such as ‘home’, ‘school’, ‘public roads’, etc. They were then asked to rate each of these spaces as ‘Safe’, ‘Moderately Safe’, or ‘Unsafe’.

Most agreed that ‘home’ and ‘school’ - where they spend the largest amount of their time - were safe spaces. One adolescent girl explained: “There are cameras installed, and no miscreants stand around outside the school.”

Some did not share the experience. Another girl said: “My school is far away and I have to walk; dealing with traffic is scary. Outside school, some people from the village hang around, and they get into fights right outside the gate.”

For others, even within the school walls, there are moments of tension - boys often get into fights or pass comments about girls.

As participants went down the list of public spaces, their responses became more complex. Facilitators gave structure to these nuances by asking the following questions:

  1. What makes a safe or unsafe place?
  2. How does one deal with unsafe elements?
  3. Does one have to change their clothes to be/feel safe?
  4. In case something happens, do parents blame or support their adolescent children?

At the end of the session, the facilitators spoke to the participants about the Rashtriya Kishor Swasthya Karyakram (RKSK), a national initiative which aims to serve 253 million adolescents in India. The participants had never heard about it. They had also never heard of Adolescent-Friendly Health Clinics (AFHC), which are mandated under RKSK. This highlights the need for greater information dissemination and more rigorous service delivery.



Prepared by Shambhavi Saxena, Senior Program Officer.