Protect Educate and Empower

Women

Protect educate and empower women is a non-profit organization, working towards preventing

sexual exploitation of vulnerable women and children, and empowering them to lead an

independent life.

The organization offers following services

  prevent human trafficking (rural and urban) by empowering them with

vocational skills to get employed

  shelter, protection and prosecution support for the rescued

  policy advocacy

For example, for urban prevention: It has community centers in 5 of urban migrant slums in Mumbai

in neighbourhoods such as Ghatkopar, Turbhe, Airoli, etc. to help prevent women from being

trafficked by reducing vulnerability factors such as lack of opportunities, livelihoods, gender

discrimination through vocational skill training and job placement support. The training

programs include short 4 month courses like beauty and hospitality offered at minimal rates.

Approach: Let ideas bubble up from the community

The project unfolded as a unique learning journey engagement with this team. Hearing out the

team through their unique stories and experiences, they built a detailed understanding of the

organization and strategically divided the project into four subsets:Urban Prevention

  Rural Prevention

  Advocacy

  Prosecution

They divided the team into groups of 5-7, ensuring a dynamic mix of members from different

departments within the organization; and a dedicated a facilitator for each team. Every team owned

one problem area and worked towards the final solution over a period of 5 months.

What happened on ground:

They kick started with well-planned research activities spread across Mumbai, Nagpur, Pune

and Sangli (they majorly operate from these major centers). They prepared detailed research

guides for every team and divided the work across the team because the number of stakeholders

involved was huge and we had to cover all the geographies in a short span of time. The research

included speaking to varied stakeholders like the on-ground mobilizers, trainers, rescued girls,

girls employed through their programs, their parents, lawyers, public prosecutors, the rescue team,

the counsellors, the shelter home teams, etc.

Building upon the research insights, brainstorming sessions were structured leading to large

buckets of ideas. These ideas were then prioritized based on the overall impact on the system at

large and taken ahead to prototype. The teams went back to the users with these prototypes, tested

them and captured their feedbacks.

Prototypes were in the form of posters, campaigns, videos, meetings which could be built and tested

quickly. Ranging from process hacks like communication collaterals, space revamp, information

channels, and information repository/website to softer emotional forms like community meetings

for fathers, welcome gifts for the newly joined government officials and capturing stories from

successful employed girls.

There were clear directions towards implementation of ideas that worked well. The

conclusion of the workshop was:

  some of the next steps for these prototypes to be improved and scaled across centers

  strategic planning guidelines for the upcoming year.

What did they achieve:

They built a culture of easy switch/to and fro between “what the user wants/feels “to “going back to

the process/service” and working forward from there. They walked the journey with the internal

team in identifying and prototyping both the a) quick fixes and b) larger strategic directional

changes. Presently, their team is working on scaling these solutions to the real scenarios.

They made the team experience and believe that change making is not a big deal if the user is

understood well!

