|
Aagaz Academy
 IDYWC has established Aagaz Academy, a state level centre for women leadership. The academy aims to strengthen transformative leadership abilities amongst the women elected to panchayats in some districts of Madhya Pradesh. Elected women panchayat representatives who have taken training on women’s leadership workshop are not just effective leaders, but also have demonstrated phenomenal leadership ability, amidst all odds. For these women the need for support, for skill building, for mentoring has reached a very different level and demands a qualitatively deeper response. There is a need to deepen not just technical skills, but also processes that help enhance a better self awareness, build a deeper understanding of transformative leadership, and develop a more astute understanding of politics and power.
Aagaz Academy is one of the seven academies all over India, which provide an institutional space for elected women leaders in panchayats. The women panchayat leaders are welcome in the academy to strengthen their skills, building solidarity and for sharing their experiences. Time to time, the academy gives training on planning and budget, and on various other themes.
The centre envisions a world where women leaders become actors of their own development. It also envisions a world where elected women exercise their leadership, as well as their socio-economic, political and cultural rights to set the path for a society based on the principles of Equality, Justice and Peace.
The main spirit of Aagaz academy is:
I Cannot to I Can
This means a journey in understanding self, as a social construct, and to use this understanding to empower oneself.
From I to We
The social changes happen when individual changes transform the community and affect larger macro changes. The participants learn to deal with not just power within them but also with the power they have with large numbers of strong groups and constituencies.
Understanding Panchayats as Little Republics
That local governance is not about having efficient and effective decentralised mechanism delivering development to the local persons. It is about local people taking control of their own development and governing themselves, so that they are able to direct, design and impact upon significantly their development processes.
Strengthening Leadership
This means strengthen leadership abilities of elected women representatives in such a way they are able to exercise this leadership towards reducing poverty, injustice and inequality in their respective constituencies.
Building Reflection – Learning Spaces
This means harvesting learning from our work so we can establish and validate a knowledge base and practices of women’s transformative leadership.
Building Knowledge
Building knowledge means creating a universe of knowledge, which can aid the sphere of learning amongst elected women leaders in multiple contexts. It also means contributing to the 'mainstream' with new knowledge about women's inherent potential at transformative leadership.
Building Constituencies
Building constituencies means creation of an enabling environment that begins linkages, amplifies and connects the experiences of elected women representatives with each other, and the rest of the world to provide visibility to the efforts of elected women leaders.
|
