Teen In — Lean In Initiative for Teenagers …

I am Niyati Shirguppi, in eleventh grade and school house captain of GreenwoodHigh International school. I founded TeenIn circle along with two other girls, Meera Raghunathan and Moskha Visanagiri.

From a young, I have been involved in various non-profit activities including raising funds for Indian Association of the Blind, working with Akshaya Patra to create awareness and increase the reach of corporate they are involved with etc. All this and made me realize what i truly enjoy doing, and that is interacting with people I could possibly learn from or help out.

Maybe three years ago, I was going to school and I saw my mom reading a book called “LeanIn” and I asked her “what is it about.” she began reading a few chapters from the book. At that age, from what I understood, it was about empowering women who are in the workforce by making them grab every opportunity that is thrown their way. It included breaking down those societal and self-made glass ceilings. At various points of the book, my mom kept repeating “oh i wish i knew this when i was your age”.

These thoughts struck me with the idea.. “why START the change and from women who are old enough to have their personalities molded. Instead, we could help the teenage girls who are in the process of finding themselves and their route.” and thats where TeenIn came from.

( L- R) Meera, Preethi — Lean In WiTI Leader, Niyati, Moksha

TeenIn comes under the Lean In Women in Tech India (WiTI)network . It is aimed at encouraging teenager girls to LeanIn and support one another. We want these girls around us to grow into confident women who are clear of their goal and hence be able to break those barriers that come in the way of achieving what they desire.

The two main aims of TeenIn:

• To penetrate in to the schools where this education is not being provided
• Grow into a sustainable circle under WITI, that we could eventually pass on.

We are privileged to have had the opportunity to be surrounded by open-minded people who have helped us grow and who happen to be supporters of gender equality. In our school, we were lucky to have been taught at a young age how to deal with difficult situations, being girls in today’s society. Thanks to that, we have developed, and are still growing, into strong confident women hence want to give it back to the ones who may be in need of it the most.

We had a great experience visiting both private schools and public schools in Bangalore where we organized events

First School Event

Our event at government school was located in the rurl parts of Bangalore, was the first event under our organization. The school caters to the students from 43 villages covering a radius of 12Km from the school. From meeting the principal to pitching our idea to finding a speaker for the actual event, we felt an assortment of emotions. We felt scared and nervous, but we were mostly excited to meet the students and get to know them.

We believe that the first step to empowerment and equality is education and, hence, that is what the activity in this school focused on. First, the kids were asked to do a quick speed introduction where they introduce themselves to people whom they do not speak to on a daily basis. This gave them a chance to speak up and step out of their comfort zones. Then, the students were split into groups of 8 people. Each one was asked to write out their career-focused dream, the limitations or barriers they may face when trying to pursue it and the measures they plan on taking if they those obstacles become a reality. On spending 20 minutes, to think through and make note of this, they shared it with their group members.

Two weeks before we went to this school for the activity, we met a girl who had grown up in a similar environment. As our conversation went on, we came to the topic of her education. She explained to us how when she was younger and spoke about her future goals at home, she was told that to never bring up such a topic again. Knowing such circumstances, we wanted to give the kids an open environment where they were free to talk about their future, their dreams, what gives them inspiration and what they look forward to in their life.

The day before we were all wracked with nerves as we went through the schedule of our event and our speeches. We were so set on having everything going perfectly that we forgot that the event was to take the education outside of the classroom and to have fun. It was only until our mentor, Preethi told us to let go that we tried not to rule every part of the event. Instead, we decided to create a loose timeline and leave everything else up to what the moment or the students wanted.

I still remember how we all looked at each nervously as the students slowly walked into the huge room we were in. But as we started speaking one after another we started feeling more comfortable. We were just here to help the students and help them find themselves. We were here to inspire them but that didn’t mean we couldn’t learn from them too. I remember how when we reached the school we found out that one of the activities couldn’t be conducted in a huge circle as we wanted too. Although we were disappointed we took Preethi’s advice and improvised and it turned out even better.

In our conversations following the event, the talks are only filled with love. Our first event had some hurdles but through the help of our mentor and all the adults present we were able to successfully overcome them. The students asked for our emails and expressed their gratitude for the work we did with them for three hours. The fact that the children were so willing to participate and genuinely wanted to continue the conversations warmed our hearts. We learned a lot through our first event. We learned to go with the flow but we also learned that anything that we do for a good reason and put our hearts into will always turn out a success.

With this rural school specifically, we did face a few difficulties. For example, we had to take permission from many people just to allow the kids to form groups with both girls and boys as that is not normal there.

All in all, the highlight of the event was when a little girl came up to us and said, “Never in my entire life have I ever felt equal to the boys, but today you just made me feel that way.” These responses were what kept us going. We felt a sense of purpose.

By visiting the rural schools, we realized that we have grown up in an environment where my parents, teachers and other adult figures treated me no different from the boys. We grew up learning that we had the right to make my own decisions but also realized that many others do not have the same freedom. For us, education was about being forced to go to school every day and learn about geometry or the history of India but for many others, it meant so much more. It was their path to independence. Their path to freedom. And I feel grateful to have brought them closer to their dreams.

Second School Event

I think what we looked forward to the most or just the thing we had set as a goal for ourselves was conducting events at schools. So, although this workshop was something we always dreamt about and was running in the back of our minds it was very surreal for it to become reality and for us to be the ones harmonizing it.

This event at the School Bangalore East was set to empower teenagers and help the ninth graders of this school realize their weighty fears and how to get closer to overcoming it with the help of their peers.

We had conducted an event just a couple of days prior to this one at a relatively smaller rural school. This definitely gave us a bit more experience and insight of the dos and the don’ts of conducting a workshop with teenagers, but that being said taking on private school where students are prevailed, as our next school, was a big step for us and we were entering into new territory. The ninth graders were around 450 in number which was near twice the number of students who attended our previous event, that itself was quite overwhelming and challenging for starters. The second thing that got us pondering was coming up with an activity and theme for the event which catered to the mindset and environment of these students who had quite a different upbringing and exposure, parallel to those of rural schools in India. After many conference calls and café coffee day meetings we had finally come up with the agenda and outline for our event at school and were all set to go.

The plan was soon confirmed with the principal of DPS and Preethi, our mentor. Now it had really come the time for us to carry this out and challenge ourselves to accomplish our goal of empowering teenagers and trying to create a safe space for them.

On arriving at the school, there was a rush of excitement and nervousness running down our spines as we set up the room allotted to us to welcome our first bath of ninth graders compromising of five sections which were 150 students in total. We kicked off the session by introducing ourselves, our goal for the day and a brief on Lean In and our TeenIn circle under it. We were so anxious it kind of felt like we would forget our own names, but nevertheless, we successfully got over the introduction and this new taste of confidence starting creeping up on us making us ready to roll with our activity.

We began with splitting the students into circles of eight to ten. We then explained to them what the activity was and what they were required to do. On the piece of paper provided to them, they had to write down their fears and plan A and plan B if the fear became an actuality for which they were given nearly ten minutes. Following this, they had to collect all the pieces of paper pertaining to their group and the elected leader of each group would have to pick every piece of paper one by one, read it out loud to the group members ensuring it was anonymous and then they were asked to discuss it trying to give in their inputs to conquer the fear read out. This took up about twenty minutes. Niyati, Moksha and I and the four volunteers who joined us for the event, Sunil Shirguppi, Meghana shirguppi, Maya Ramachandran went around trying to guide them and it was very gratifying seeing students from different friend circles coming together to help one another. It felt like we were seeing our goal come alive in front of us, and that was an inordinately great feeling.

After the discussions were done, each group had to collectively pick out fear and the respective plan A and plan B that they felt was either the most common among their group or something that stood out and the leader then had to come up in front and present it in front of everyone. This was done to help the students realize what their fears were and that they can conquer it. We also hoped to try to make them see that there are so many people around them from who they could seek help from and are definitely not left in the dark all alone. With this, we had nearly come to an end of our session. We concluded with a speech by two speakers from the IT profession with over 20 years of experience, Sunil Shirguppi and Meghana Shirguppi who wrapped it up with the concept of fears, how to conquer it and a vision of their journey.

The total session was for about an hour and a half and we conducted three such sessions before we ended for the day.

The experience as a whole was very engaging and monumental. Even though we were there to empower and help these students it felt like we also left with a lot of new strategies and practical and interesting perspectives in conquering fears which we will carry onto our lives. Some of the things that stood out to us and made it a memorable event was that we had some of the teenagers come up to us at the end of the session and tell us how they were very interested in what we were doing and wanted to know if and how they could be a part of this TeenIn moment. Having them approach us felt phenomenon as that was the point of this whole circle, to be able to have a positive impact on others and to such a level that makes them want to join us in the process on empowerment. It was also a very sensational feeling seeing these students get a step closer to conquering their fears in front of us, for example there were quite a few people who had stage fright and so we ensured they became team leaders who had to come up in front of everyone and talk to show them that they are capable of doing it. But just like there is a negative side to everything, there were a couple of things through the sessions that made it have its moments of unpleasantry. The fine line between that topics that could be joked about and the ones that couldn’t like suicide was blurred by some kids and at some it, while the leaders were presenting it became more of who was presenting rather than what they were presenting which kind of took away from the aim/point of the event.

But altogether, it was a very insightful, informative and balanced experience that gave us great exposure and direction in regards to our future projects. It brought us one step closer to achieving our goal of empowering the ones around us. This experience is very dear to us and one that we will never forget.

We are privileged to have had the opportunity to be surrounded by open-minded people who have helped us grow and who happen to be supporters of gender equality. In our school, we were lucky to have been taught at a young age how to deal with difficult situations, being girls in today’s society. Thanks to that, we have developed, and are still growing, into strong confident women hence want to give it back to the ones who may be in need of it the most.

About the Author :

Niyati Shirguppi is in eleventh grade and school house captain of GreenwoodHigh International school. Founder of Teen In Circle .