IMAGE Next

IMAGE Next

“ Nurturing Movement of Girls and Young Women as Agents of Change to Ascertain their Rights”

How it was born out of IMAGE

At present in the IMAGE project, we are only covering 3077 EMGs in 5 districts, but there are many more EMGs across the state of Karnataka to address. As per our advocacy impact is concerned, we are having less impact at the state level as compared to the village, Block and district level. So to scale up our reach and to have a significant impact at the state level, this project was born.

Project Goal

To empower girls and young women, who are victims and survivors of early child marriage to improve their access to rights, opportunities and services in Karnataka, India.

Operations and scale

In 5 years, the project will work among 15000 EMGs and survivors from 15 districts across Karnataka.

Key results

-At least 15,000 target girls and women are enrolled/ on-boarded in the movement by end of the project 

– At least 100 change agents (representatives of target girls and young women) capacities are build to self-advocate effectively and to shape the broader dialogue around their rights and access to services

 – At least 100 personnel from Government – education, health, women & child development, social welfare, law enforcement and judiciary sensitised on the representation and respond to voice of these women in Karnataka 

– At least 50 Civil Society Organisations are sensitised and engaged in Movement building

Geographic location

At present through the IMAGE project, our presence is in 5 districts of Karnataka (Bidar, Bagalkote, Belagavi, Chamarajanagar and Chikbelapura). These 5 districts will be the regional movement unit, they will cover another 10 districts adjacent to them where the child marriage is high. It works through a consortium. 

About the  Consortium

It is a consortium of 7 organizations. Where Vidyaniketan (Lead of Consortium, Secretariat of proposed movement) and 4 NGO partners are REACH in Bagalkot district, SEVAK in Belgaum district, PMSR in Chamarajanagar district and ARPANAM TRUST in Chikballapur district. CRT is the Advocacy and Communications Resource partner and Terre des Hommes Netherlands is the Co-funding and technical assistance partner. The major funding is being done by the Comic Relief Fund(CRF), UK.

 Project Interventions across five thematic areas

We are working on five areas of project interventions with EMGs and Survivors, which are as follows

1. Movement building and strengthening: The project builds a strong and growing movement by identifying and organizing EMGs and young women married before 18 years through a membership drive and strengthen them on child marriage issues.
2. Norms and Behaviour Changes at Family and Society level: Awareness and sensitization to families of target population on gender, SRHR, health and nutrition of girls and young women through the campaigns and meetings. 
3. Leadership development and capacity building: Identify and strengthen selected girls and women leaders as change agents to spearhead the movement  
4. Engagement with Government and other stakeholders: Interface between girls & young women and Government & other stakeholders with the active participation of Government and CSOs on issues that are being strategic to the project.