India faces significant challenges with harassment and violence against women. The National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) reports that violence against women and girls is still a common occurrence. According to the NCRB research, there were an astounding 4,45,256 cases of crimes against women reported in India in 2022. This figure was greater than 2020 and 2021 and translates to 51 FIRs every hour1.
Given how high this number is, it is imperative that young girls learn effective self-defense techniques so they may defend themselves in potentially harmful situations and lessen their susceptibility to harm.
Thus, the Maharashtra Prathamik Shikshan Parishad (MPSP) under the aegis of Samagra Shisksha initiated the Self-Defense training programme to teach effective Self-Defense techniques to young girls across government schools in Maharashtra.
Why Self-Defense?
In different regions of Maharashtra, several school girls travel a significant distance on foot, bicycle or use public transport to reach their school every day. Due to this, parents are often reluctant to send them to school due to safety concerns. Self-Defense training, under the Rani Laxmibai Atma Raksha Prashikshan scheme, acts as an essential tool to equip young girls to handle unwanted situations.
Acquiring knowledge of self-defense techniques gives them more confidence, enhances their self-worth, and fosters a feeling of security. This self-assurance can help young school girls succeed in other spheres of life by motivating them to follow their goals fearlessly.
Training in self-defense also enhances both mental and physical health as well as imparts important life skills like focus, discipline, and quick decision-making.
The Skill Tree Expertise:
In 2023-24, Skill Tree joined hands with the state government of Maharashtra to impart high quality self-defense skills to more than 17 lakh school girls across the state. Our aim was to support the government’s vision of empowering school girls by delivering self-defense training sessions. In order to carry out this mammoth task, Skill Tree tapped into its infrastructure and service expertise and performed a school mapping exercise. Dividing Maharashtra into 6 divisions, we identified as many as 22,201 government schools across 36 districts.
With lakhs of girl students enrolled in these schools, the challenge was to impart quality self-defense training in order to empower them and provide a strong foundation.
One of the first steps in this project was to appoint and deploy self-defense trainers who would be responsible for the training sessions. Apart from the appointment of trainers, Skill Tree also designed a holistic training programme for the specified duration.
We managed to smoothly run this programme and trained more than 17 lakh girl students from classes 6 to 12 for a period of 3 months. This massive feat was achieved by appointing 4,000 qualified trainers who provided a total training of 100 hours in various self- defense techniques.
Some of the techniques taught in schools were adapted from martial arts such as Karate, Taekwondo, Judo and Kickboxing. Upon completion, the students were also awarded with a certificate.
The Skill Tree Effect:
Apart from appointing 4,000 trainers and delivering a comprehensive training module, Skill Tree set a new world record by providing self-defense training to more than 17 lakh school girls.
We also developed an online MIS tool to monitor and evaluate the project’s progress and published a manual to highlight some Self-Defense training techniques and information on child rights.
Several self-defense techniques such as arm grab defense, tackle techniques, footwork skills, act of balance breaking, different types of kicks and throat choke techniques, were included in the training framework. A result of these efforts created a positive impact on girl students as schools noticed a higher engagement and retention rate.
The project was a huge success as Skill Tree achieved 100% self-defense training and its efforts were widely covered in the local and state media.
