Gender Sensitization Workshop

A workshop was organized by NSS, IIT Roorkee in co-ordination with ‘People For Parity’, an

 NGO, on 22nd  September 2013, with the noble aim of educating the “educated” mass of the society on the burning national issue of ‘Gender Discrimination and Female Empowerment’. Around 250 students registered for the workshop out of which 200 were able to attend it. Two sessions of the workshop were organized, first in morning from 9:30am to 12:30 in noon and the second in afternoon from 2:00pm to 5:00pm at the Yoga Hall, Saraswati Mandir in the campus. The event started with a formal introduction of “People For Parity” and then the attendees were divided in groups, each headed by two volunteers from the organization. In order to make students understand the message organizers wanted to convey, they divided

the entire time slot into various events which included group discussions, debates and fun games like Bomb-and-Shield, Bang!, Netaji-Swamiji-Gandhiji. Workshop started with Cross Introduction, where students were to introduce their partners after few minutes of private discussion followed by funny, interesting yet meaningful games. Thereafter, they showed evocative clips that displayed the gender disparity and female dilemmas prevalent in the contemporary society. Participants were encouraged to reflect upon these issues and to share instances from their life that linked to the issue closely. Next in the series were group discussions on various real-life situations that are faced by a typical woman of the Indian society. The students actively participated in these discussions and put forward their opinions which had sharp contrasts. In the end Dr. Smita Jha, Chief Program Coordinator NSS, delivered a vote of thanks and offered a memento to the coordinator of the NGO. The participants were full of zeal and enthusiasm and were looking forward for more such active workshops to be held from time to time. Best way to uplift the society is to make the society go through the various situations and let themselves decide what should be the remedial steps, and that was the driving force behind this organization that works for the cause of parity, for the humanity.