Maitrayana uses sport as a tool to empower girls and young women. It runs Young People’s Initiative Pragati, a netball and life skills programme for adolescent girls (10-17 year) in Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore. This programme follows, in general, the academic year after which participants graduate and can continue participation in girls led netball clubs, thematic sessions and the economic justice programme.

 Maitrayana uses sport as tool to work towards creating ecosystems that empower adolescent girls and young women to exercise their rights and achieve their potential. Access to sport is one of the rights that girls in the Indian context is often denied. One of the reasons is parents’ concern about girls’ safety. While this is one of the reasons that programmes need to ensure a safe environment, Maitrayana sees it especially as a human rights concern. As organisation and implementer of programmes with girls, Maitrayana is a duty bearer who must make sure that girls have access to safe sport e.g. girls should be safe while coming to the site and going back home, during sessions when temperatures can be high, monsoon rains which can make a pitch slippery, poor air quality affecting girls health, harassment and intimidation by bystanders. Therefore, Maitrayana has a strong child protection policy, ensuring high quality and consistent trainings of staff and participants on child protection, a robust structure and processes and a thorough review process that ensures that new promising practises are institutionalised and emerging trends incorporated. Being a duty barer for girls to be safe in sport, also means that Maitrayana has to make sure that girls can benefit to the fullest by removing other barriers that can keep them from accessing their right to play. This means working with parents, communities, schools, sport clubs, NGOs, and sports associations to create awareness about the vulnerabilities that are inherent to sport (injuries, exhaustion, exercises that are not age appropriate etc) but also about the risks of participation in programmes in general (power imbalance, interaction, traveling to and from the sessions) and build capacity for safe and equal sport opportunities for girls.

On the other hand, there are the girls who are right holders in this process and must understand their rights and develop the life skills that enable them to claim their right to play and be safe from harm. The many cases that have recently come up in the media shows that there is a lot that needs to be done in this regard.

As Maitrayana has a strong child protection policy and equally strong promising practices and systems to ensure that these are being met, the next step is to build the ecosystem outside the organisation. Activities under this project will be:

1. Creating awareness by sensitizing duty bearers on girls right to access safe sport and how this can be done.

-   Two sensitization sessions with stakeholders (parents, schools, community members) in Delhi, Bangalore and Mumbai. (3x60 beneficiaries)

-   Two webinars per year for sport organisations and organisations that are using sport in their programmes to create awareness of safe sport for girls, celebrate Safe Sport Day, share best practices and the development of child protection policies. (2x15)

2.Building capacity to implement safe sport for girls and women

-   Training of Samiti members as safe sport champions and in that capacity will support and facilitate girls in claiming their right to the same. (2x10)

-  Coordinating and facilitating the Collective Safeguarding Children in Sport, a platform for organisations that use sport to work towards sustainable development goals:

·   Four online sessions to build capacity on developing child protection policies, training of staff and children and setting up referral systems. (4x15)

·   One two-days face to face workshop with 10 organisations on the safe sport champions concept in order to build an ecosystem. (1x20)

3.   Advocacy

-       Advocating for the implementation of policies at local level

· One campaign with girls and local stakeholders (1x20=5)

4.   Strengthening Maitrayana’s practices

- Review and update Maitrayana’s child protection policy

- Two capacity building workshops for staff to facilitate the above mentioned activities/strategies as trainers (1 and 2) and advocates (3) (2x30)

-  Training of a staff who coordinates all safeguarding girls in sport activities (1)

1. The project addresses a serious and urgent topic from a girls and women
2. The project is led by women with experience in this topic. The project leader is the Asia representative in the UNICEF
3. The project aims at creating an ecosystem within the society while at the same time it will build Maitrayana

Maitrayana is a girls and women’s rights organisation that leverages the power of sport to create ecosystems that empower girls and young women to exercise their rights and fulfil their potential. In its programmes it addresses gender inequality in the society by equipping girls and young women with assets such as knowledge, skills, attitudes, behaviour and confidence that will enable them to make/influence decisions in their lives. Maitrayana is a Not-for-Profit organisation under Section 8 of the Companies Act (since 2018). It is led by senior management with more than 60 years of experience in using sport as a tool for women’s empowerment. The YPI in Maitrayana started its implementation in October 2021. By March 2023, it had reached out to 5,284 adolescent girls and young women in Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru.

 Maitrayana’s values are integrity, transparency, respect and inclusion. The organisation has an active board and has an ambitious 5-year strategic plan 2023 – 2028. Besides working with adolescent girls and young women, it also works with families and communities and the wider ecosystem such as NGOs, companies etc to work towards its vision.

 https://maitrayana.in/