Abstract

Youth has tremendous potential to trigger social change. Gender parity is an area in which youth can contribute significantly. Gender roles have a strong relationship with sexual identity. Socio- cultural realities are instrumental in shaping the gender and sexuality stereotypes leading to a biased, conflicting and ignorant behavior. This can lead to increased incidences of abuse, sexually risky behavior patterns and gender based violence. Shaping the adolescent minds to nurture healthy attitudes towards sexuality and gender parity is the need of time. Young adults can play a very crucial role in this change by establishing a constructive and rational dialogue with the adolescents. However first they need to be empowered for being instrumental in this change process. The present two tiered experimental study is a successful attempt to empower youth through in depth training in sexuality education and gender parity along with mentoring skills to become facilitators in spreading this message. At level one, impact of intensive training imparted to 115 youth from urban India in the two mentioned areas was studied through a repeated measures quasi experimental design. Three tools namely ‘Stepping into youth- knowledge test, Stepping into youth- Attitude test and Stepping into youth- Gender Concepts test were used. At level two, the impact of a series of 20 classroom sessions conducted for the adolescents by these young adults was studied. Significant positive changes were noted on all the three variables at both the levels. The qualitative analysis of the youth facilitators’ FGDs supports the findings and indicates towards the change triggered in the adolescents through active engagement. This shows that young adults can play a crucial role in initiating positive social change aiming towards abolition of sexual abuse and gender inequality.